


Autumnal Hauntings

by ProdigyBlood



Series: Ghost AU [1]
Category: South Park
Genre: Bad Pick-Up Lines, Fluff, Kenny just wants to look after him, Kenny’s a ghost, Kyle is overworked and sleep deprived, M/M, Romance, ghost story, haunted house au, spoopy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-07-24 16:59:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16179326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProdigyBlood/pseuds/ProdigyBlood
Summary: When Kyle Broflovski moved into a supposedly haunted house he didn’t expect to start believing in the existence of ghosts. And hecertainlydidn’t expect to start to fall in love with one, but here we are.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween!! It’s definitely Halloween all of October, _right_????

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/139273360@N08/44540180335/in/dateposted-public/)

There had to be a catch. 

When he’d told the estate agent about his ideal house her face had lit up. When he’d mentioned his price range, it had fallen. He might have to face disappointment, she’d warned him. 

“Your budget can certainly get you a place with a home office, but – ” She’d trailed off and Kyle realised she was trying to find a polite way to word ‘There’s no way in hell that you can afford what you want on the money you make.’ 

She’d dragged him all over, viewing houses and apartments alike. Each place had been perfectly adequate but lacking a certain something that Kyle couldn’t quite put his finger on. They didn’t wow him. It certainly didn’t help that they were all far smaller than he’d hoped. Perhaps he’d overestimated. Maybe he’d have to settle after all. It was disappointing, but life was often that way. 

Seemingly sensing his discouragement, she’d chewed on her lip and nervously suggested the house. 

“It’s a little far out,” she’d warned, a hesitant edge to her voice. “A little isolated.”

Kyle hadn’t expected much but he’d agreed to look at the place. He had nothing to lose and it certainly couldn’t hurt.

It wasn’t as far out as she’d made it seem with her reluctance and, as soon as he laid eyes on it, Kyle knew it was the house for him. It was large, far larger than he’d expected to own for at least another twenty years, if ever at all. 

It stood alone, no neighbours as far as the eye could see. Kyle couldn’t see that being a problem, really. He dealt with enough bullshit from people at work, a reprieve at home would be more than welcomed. No noisy neighbours, no having to pretend to be polite, just peace and quiet… Man, it actually sounded quite heavenly. 

The garden was overgrown and riddled with weeds, almost hiding the path that led to the porch. The weathered porch covered half the front of the house and a giant bay window decorated the other. The front door was such a faded red that it looked almost orange in colour and was covered in a thick layer of grime from years of abandonment. 

Out of control ivy climbed the faded white exterior, hiding just how dilapidated the place really was. 

Basically, the place was a hot mess.

Kyle couldn’t explain why he loved it. There was no logical reason. But sometimes reason defies logic and, even as the old wooden floorboards creaked beneath him and the hinges of every single door squeaked in protest, Kyle had known he wanted to live there. 

“It’s a doer-uper,” Bebe, the estate agent, said, lingering in the doorway of the large lounge. Kyle hadn’t failed to notice how she’d jumped at every single noise the old house had made. Kyle, himself, felt it gave the place character. “But this room sure does get a lot of light. You’ll get some mighty fine sunrises through it.”

“Sunsets,” Kyle corrected without thinking. He flashed her a quick smile, keen not to come off as a dick and be screwed out of the house. 

“Always get that one wrong,” Bebe said, laughing nervously. Kyle was pretty sure she wasn’t afraid of him (she hadn’t acted this jumpy in any of the other places she’d shown him) which could only mean what he had slowly started to suspect as he’d trailed around the dusty, long abandoned house. 

“How long’s it been on the market?” he asked. 

“Three years now.”

“But it’s been empty longer,” he said. 

“Yes. It’s been empty a long time. Look, it’s nonsense, of course, but I have to disclose the houses history to you.” She took a deep breath, reading herself.

“Let me guess, it’s horribly haunted,” Kyle said before she could pluck up the nerve. 

“If you believe in such things,” Bebe said, sounding relieved. Judging from how jumpy she’d been, she clearly _did_ believe in such things. Kyle decided against pointing that out. 

“I don’t,” he said calmly. There was always a logical explanation when it came to ghosts and, despite where he’d grown up, he wasn’t inclined to believe in their existence.

“Well that’s good,” she said, nervously wringing her hands before her. 

“So, what’s the bloody history? A serious of mysterious murders?”

“It’s actually quite tame.” Bebe finally gave a genuine smile. “Ninety years ago a young man fell as the banister gave way. Broke his neck.”

“And that warrants the house being empty for all these years?” Kyle arched an eyebrow. 

“Ah, well,” again Bebe’s smile faltered, “it’s the stories of what happened after that keep people away.” Kyle leaned against the nearest wall and looked at her expectantly. “Well, from what I know, the guy who died was visiting a friend here. They were, obviously, a little freaked out by the whole experience and so sold the house. The next owners stayed for all of three months before clearing out. The people after them only lasted a month longer. 

“The house was empty for a few years after that. When somebody else finally moved in, they left within days, claiming furniture moved around and they could hear someone walking down the halls all night every night.

“After that, the house was bought by someone who turned it into a kinda hotel, using the hauntings as its sell point. It was popular for a few months but then people stopped coming and it started getting bad reviews so they had to sell up. 

“Some rich old man bought it from them but never moved in. He died a few years back and his grandchildren put the house up on the market. It’s been there ever since.” 

Kyle remained silent for a few minutes, his gaze wandering around the room. It was large and light, with high ceilings and a window seat beneath the bay window. There was dust and peeling wallpaper everywhere and Kyle was pretty sure rats had long since claimed the house as their own.

Haunted, huh? 

“We could go back and take another look at that apartment in – ” Bebe started to say after the silence dragged on. 

“No need,” he said. “Could you give me a little time to wander around?” 

Bebe’s eyes widened but she nodded and told him to take all the time he needed, promising she’d wait by the car. He watched through the grimy windows as she practically ran outside. It had been abundantly obviously that she’d been desperate to escape ever since she had crossed the threshold into the house. Kyle wasn’t sure if she could sense something he couldn’t because, other than being a little – okay, a _lot_ – dilapidated, it was a nice, airy house. The air being stagnant from years of abandonment and its occupants in the form of spiders and rats were hardly cause to run screaming. Then again, he remembered gentle, animal lover Stan begging him to ‘kill it with fire’ when there had been a spider in his bedroom and thought that maybe she had a phobia. 

He didn’t know why he was trying to mentally defend her. She was clearly afraid of the so called ghost. 

He snorted and rolled his eyes. 

The thick dust lining the floor like a carpet muffled Kyle’s footsteps as he walked through the house. He kept his eyes peeled but, as expected, there was no indication of anything out of the normal. It had probably been the ancient plumbing and the building itself contracting and expanding in the varied Colorado temperatures that had scared off the previous owners. 

People really would believe anything if you put the idea into their heads. 

Kyle spent a further thirty minutes exploring the house. He took careful note of the condition of the building, not wanting to pour all his savings into something that was about to collapse. It was in surprisingly good condition. Kyle wondered whether the ghost was on top of its upkeep. 

Bebe was singing along to the car radio when he finally joined her. She didn’t seem surprised when he told her he’d take the house. Weary, perhaps, but hell, she wasn’t going to be the one living in it. 

 

For the first week, Kyle didn’t notice anything unusual. He took that as further proof (not that he’d needed it) that the previous owners had all possessed weak stomachs and overactive imaginations. After all, hadn’t Bebe said some had left within _days?_

He spent that week working on the house. Family and friends came down to help and they all stared at the big building in awe, patting Kyle on the back with impressed smiles. 

By the end of that first week, the place was dust free with a fresh lick of paint throughout. It was sparsely furnished but Kyle figured he could pick things up here and there and eventually fill the place over the years. He had a bed, desk and coffee machine - the essentials - and that was plenty to keep him going. 

Everything was perfect. Generally, Kyle was pretty happy. 

We’ll stick with generally because, right now, Kyle was cussing loudly as he walked from room to room searching for the laptop he’d put down somewhere and couldn’t, for the life of him, now find. He swore he’d left it on his desk but, when he’d retired upstairs to work on a clients case, it hadn’t been there. Taking the week off work hadn’t stopped him from spending hours each night working in a clients case. On top of decorating, he was probably just over exhausted. 

After traipsing around the house searching for the damn thing for a stupidly long time, Kyle finally admitted defeat and sat down. His sofa wasn’t particularly comfortable but he was asleep within minutes. It was probably for the best. He didn’t think his boss would appreciate him returning to work just as exhausted as he’d been when he’d left. 

Birdsong woke Kyle the next morning. He stretched, wincing as his back – stiff from sleeping on his couch all night – protested and, as he gaze moved around the room, he spied his laptop open on his dining table, a half empty mug of coffee next to it. 

He sighed. 

Sleeping on the couch mightn’t have been the best idea but he’d clearly needed the sleep if he’d walked blindly past _that._

 

Another week in the house and Kyle felt as if he was settling nicely. His mother had been worried he’d be lonely in such a large house all by himself but the peace was always a welcomed relief after long days at work. Only occasionally would he long for his late night gaming sessions with ex-roomie, Stan. And, just because they didn’t live together and had incompatible, busy schedules, those nights weren’t off the table. Just because Kyle had chosen to live like a hermit, it didn’t mean his super best friend couldn’t still visit. 

One thing Kyle _had_ learned from living in such a large place, though, was that he was, apparently, a forgetful person. Perhaps he hadn’t noticed before because his flat with Stan had been so small, that it was impossible to lose anything. Here, with so many rooms to spare (and the novelty of visiting them all not having worn off) Kyle was forever putting things down, turning to pick them up a short while later only for them not to be where he’d thought he’d left them. It was a little frustrating, especially when the accused item were his keys and he was running late. 

He also seemed to be forgetting how much coffee he’d drank and trying to sip from empty mugs. 

It wasn’t until a month living in the house that he started to wonder whether it wasn’t all just him losing his marbles. 

He’d run a bath, leaving the room while it filled. When he’d returned, instead of finding a full bath, he found water pouring into an empty one and vanishing straight down the drain. The plug was sitting proudly on the side of the tub, as if gloating. He’d definitely put it in. He’d watched the bath start to fill before he’d vanished back downstairs to grab a cup of coffee. 

He knew he had. He was _certain._ He –

No. No way. He must have made a mistake.

There was no such thing as ghosts and he wasn’t going to start humouring that stupid idea now. He was just tired from his mentally demanding job. Nobody had ever claimed being a lawyer would be easy. 

Putting his coffee down, he put the plug in, adamantly ignoring the fact that it was wet, like a running tap had been pounding on top of it for a minute or two before being removed. 

 

By the time his second month rocked around, Kyle was starting to struggle to come up with logical explanations for certain occurrences. 

Every night at 2AM on the dot, Kyle’s cell would ring and caller ID would declare it to be the house phone. It had been happening for two weeks now and Kyle had long since stopped panicking that somebody had broken in. 

The problem was, he couldn’t think of any other logical explanation for the phenomenon. And, when he added the other strange occurrences to the mix, he was starting to wonder whether the ghost stories had a certain truth to them. 

If so, this ghost was a bloody menace. 

He told it such. 

“You’re a fucking menace,” he said to the air after slamming down on the end call button after his own house called him _again_. “Don’t think I won’t get an exorcist in here if you don’t stop disturbing my sleep.”

He was almost never asleep by 2AM but that was hardly the point. 

His words were met by silence. “Yeah,” he grumbled, “You think about what you’ve done.”

He returned his attention to his case notes. Not even five minutes passed before his cell started ringing again. Huh, that was odd. It never rang twice in a row.

He answered it, not that that ever got him anywhere. Whether it was a sentient house or a ghost, it never wanted to chat. It just got some kind of sadistic kick out of annoying him. 

The line was silent, as expected. 

Heaving a sigh, Kyle moved the phone from his ear and went to click end call when he heard a voice down the line. He froze, unsure whether he’d imagined it or not.

It took him half a minute before he realised he should probably speak. 

“Uh, hello?” he said, lifting the phone back to his ear. 

Silence. 

“Well, if you’re gonna be like that you can just go to hell, ya cabbage!” Recently, Kyle had found his Jersey side would come out a little if he was just the right mix of pissed off and tired. Currently, it was a cocktail of emotions he was experiencing almost constantly. 

There was laughter down the line. 

“Did you just call me a cabbage?” a voice asked, stifling a giggle. It was male, but not overtly masculine. It probably wasn’t the voice of a seven foot bodybuilder. It seemed more like the voice of a singer, or somebody who read audiobooks for a living. It was a nice voice. 

“Who is this?” Kyle asked, not missing a beat. 

There was a long silence. “Who’d you think it is?” the voice asked finally. 

“I’ve narrowed it down to either the house or the dude who died here.”

“…You think I might be the house?” The speaker was clearly suppressing further giggles. 

“Seems just as likely as ghosts,” Kyle said. 

“I’m not sure I’d agree. I’ve certainly never met a talking house before.”

“And you’ve met a ghost?”

There was a long silence in which Kyle wondered whether he was being too much of a dick. If this wasn’t a prank (he would murder whoever it was pulling it if it were) then he was talking to an actual ghost. Was there a correct etiquette? If he was rude would the spirit become violent? Would it haunt him forever? It was all a little weird. 

Scratch that. A _lot_ weird. 

“Dude, I _am_ a ghost!” The reply was so casual that Kyle wondered whether there was just a lag between the separate planes of existence that they were apparently on. 

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” he huffed. 

“Skeptics are the worst, man,” the ‘ghost’ complained. “At least you haven’t run screaming yet.”

“Why would I? If anything, you’re just a mild irritation. I paid good money for this house. If anyone should leave, it’s _you_.”

“I know for a fact you got this place at a bargain price thanks to _moi_. Babe, you should thank me!” 

…Had a ghost just called him _babe_?

“Why haven’t you scared me out yet?”

“Because you’re cute,” the ghost said. “And you look daaamn fine naked.”

Kyle hung up the phone abruptly. 

He stood up and rushed into the kitchen, hoping to god his face wasn’t as red as it felt. 

As he set about making a coffee (it wasn’t like he was going to be able to sleep, why even bother?) he said aloud, “Don’t watch me naked, asshole.”

His phone beeped. 

_Trust me, you’d watch /me/ naked too if I gave you the chance ;)_

Kyle didn’t even want to know how a ninety-year-old ghost was texting him. 

 

The following night when Kyle’s phone rang at 2AM, he didn’t answer it. 

 

A big case kept Kyle busy over the next week and he barely found himself returning home, let alone thinking about the flirty roommate he’d apparently found himself landed with. He still couldn’t be certain he wasn’t being punked – Cartman would definitely go to that length, although there was the obvious problem that he hadn’t seen or spoken to Eric Cartman in three years. Then again, that probably wouldn’t stop Cartman. 

His cell hadn’t rung since that night he’d hung up on it. Well, not from any ghosts anyway. Plenty of _other_ people kept calling him, filling his already crammed schedule until Kyle was pretty sure he’d forgotten what sleep was and what a body that wasn’t ninety percent caffeine felt like. 

The weekend offered no reprieve and, by the time Monday rolled in, Kyle was basically a walking zombie.

Somehow, he found a spare hour to grab a drink with Stan and Butters in the evening. 

“Dude,” Stan said disapprovingly after having taken one look at Kyle and the dark purple bags under his eyes. “Get some sleep.”

“What is this sleep you speak of?” Kyle slumped down at their table and swiped Stan’s beer. 

“Gee, fella, you look like crap. Maybe we should reschedule?”

“To when?” Kyle asked, taking a swig of Stan’s drink, wincing and pushing it back towards its original owner. “I’m so busy I’ve already had to reschedule my weekly phone call with ma three times. She’ll be furious when she hears I managed to squeeze you two in before her.” _When_ , not _if_. Because Shiela Broflovski had a knack of finding out every going ons in her sons life. He was surprised she hadn’t left him a message telling him to stop talking to flirty ghosts and get some sleep yet. 

“Dude, this isn’t healthy. Maybe you should take a holiday or something?” Stan said. 

“Can’t,” Kyle said. “Massive tax scandal. My boss won’t even let me have a single _day_ off right now.” 

“Oh gee, that sure sucks,” Butters said sympathetically. 

“It sure does.” Kyle let his head rest in his palms. He tried to stay alert so he could catch up with his two closest friends but he felt his eyes drooping and all noise fading into the background until he couldn’t work out a damn thing anyone was saying. 

He wasn’t aware of anything more until Stan poked him and said he would drive him home. 

“My car,” he slurred, although he was far too tired to even consider driving. 

“I’ll drive it and Butters will follow me,” Stan said in a very parental way. Kyle opened his mouth to argue but closed it again, seeing no point. He was hardly in the right state to be socialising and tomorrow would be another long day. 

Sometimes he wondered whether he should have chosen a different career. One that didn’t eat away at his life until all that was left was a caffeine powered robot. 

At least he was damn good at his job. That was something.

In the car, Kyle rested his head against the window and stared out at the yellowing leafs illuminated by the bright nights moon. 

“I think my house might be haunted,” he told Stan.

“Why’d you think that?” Stan kept his eyes fixed on the road. 

“A ghost phoned me.”

“You guys have a nice chat?” Great, Stan was clearly humouring him, apparently deciding Kyle was talking nonsense because he was exhausted. 

“Great,” Kyle said. “He thinks I look good naked.”

Okay, that got Stan’s attention. His eyes briefly flickered from the road to his sleep deprived friend. “I think somebody was pranking you, dude.”

“Because I couldn’t possibly have a hot body?!” 

“Jesus.” If he weren’t driving, Kyle knew Stan would be pinching the bridge of his nose right now. “I’m sure your body is hot, dude. I just doubt ghosts care about that stuff.” 

They fell silent again after that. 

Stan had to practically carry him inside when they got back to the house and, like a stern parent he demanded Kyle go straight to bed. 

“I’ve still got notes to go over,” Kyle said, though he wasn’t sure whether the words were intelligible. Stan obviously got the general gist because he rolled his eyes and folded his arms across his chest.

“This situation should be because you got too drunk, dude. Not because you haven’t slept in, what? Seventy-two hours?” How long _had_ it been since he’d last had more than a few precious minutes of sleep? 

Kyle sure as heck would be glad when this case was over. 

After making Kyle promise to go straight to bed no less than ten times, Stan and Butters finally left. 

Kyle debated making coffee and trying to power through for another hour – it wasn’t actually that late yet, it hadn’t even passed midnight – but, ultimately, a good nights rest would benefit him far more than some illegible notes left by a sleep deprived zombie. 

He traipsed upstairs and flopped facedown onto his bed, not even bothering to climb in under the covers. He was asleep before his nose hit the pillow. 

When he woke the next morning, he found himself so carefully tucked in that he couldn’t have possible done it in his sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m not particularly happy with this chapter but I don’t have time to rewrite it if I want to keep to my upload schedule so it’s gonna have to do. I am the queen of procrastination. I need to stop leaving everything to the last minute if I don’t want this to keep happening XD 
> 
> I’m hoping to add some spooky stuff in from next chapter, seeing as this is a halloween fic and all :DD

_Creak._

Kyle’s eyes snapped open as he woke with a start. He’d lived in this house long enough now to know how the floorboard by his bed creaked with pressure. Somebody was in his room. 

For a moment he lay still, eyes open but fixed on his ceiling in the otherwise pitch black. Not wanting to alert his intruder that he was awake, he made an effort to keep his breathing soft and even. It was a difficult feat to achieve as his mind raced through possible outcomes of the next few minutes.

What if they had a weapon? 

Did _he_ have a weapon? 

Their was another creaky floorboard in his room. One by the door. If he heard that then at least he would know where the intruder was. Without moving his head, Kyle tried to roll his eyes – already starting to adjust to the dark – to see whether he could spot anyone. From his position, and without any light, it was impossible to tell. Either way, he hadn’t heard another sound since the one that had woken him. Could he have possibly dreamed it?

Kyle wasn’t sure whether it was foolishness or bravery that made him reach out and flick on his lamp. The sudden light blinded him and he blinked in rapid succession until the glare stopped threatening to melt his irises. His only consolation was that, hopefully, his potential intruder would be hindered with the same sudden blindness and not have a chance to attack him unawares. 

When the coloured spots obstructing his vision finally faded and he was able to see, he did a quick scan of the room. 

Nothing. 

Leaning over, he peered under the bed. There was nobody there. 

Nobody he could _see_ , anyway. 

“You better not be spying on me again,” he said to the air. Kyle still wasn’t entirely sure he believed in the ghost he had briefly chatted to the week before but he was alone with nobody to call him out for acting crazy. Unless, of course, this _was_ some extravagant prank and there were cameras. In which case, somebody was getting sued and murdered for invasion of privacy. 

A ghost or somebody actually risking their life (because he _would_ kill the idiot) pranking him. Kyle wasn’t sure which was more unlikely. 

His phone beeped. 

Opening his messages, Kyle frowned. 

Apparently his house phone could send him memes now. Brilliant. 

_[image received]_

[](https://imgflip.com/i/1vp8u8)

“How are you doing this?” He was asking the air. He didn’t expect an answer because his house. Wasn’t. Haunted. 

His phone beeped again, though. 

_I don’t reveal my secrets to anyone ;P_

This was crazy. It didn’t make a lick of sense. Even if ghosts did exist, since when did they behave like this? Kyle had seen his fair share of horror movies and the ghosts never behaved like this. They scared the living crap out of people. Maybe murdered them. They didn’t send playful text messages. 

_[image received]_

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/139273360@N08/43413718030/in/dateposted-public/)

“Oh goddamnit,” he said, rolling his eyes at the new meme. “Stop _flirting_ with me.”

It had been a long time since anyone had flirted with Kyle. He was usually so overworked and stressed out that his face had become fixed in a permanent glare, scaring off anyone before they got the chance to so much as open their mouths. He smiled so little that the muscles could do little more than twitch and Stan had told him the overall effect was somewhat terrifying. 

_‘Maybe it’s the Jersey in you, but you can be pretty scary, dude.’_

So, yeah, it had been a while but Kyle couldn’t find it in himself to be flattered when the attention was coming from a dead dude. A dead dude he knew _nothing_ about, except that, somehow, he had managed to keep up with technology in the years he’d been dead. To be fair, it probably _was_ a rather boring existence and ghosts needed to get their kicks somewhere. 

“Who even are you?” Kyle found himself asking. It looked like he was stuck with him so he might as well make an effort to understand the pest living in his house. He decided to look at it like having an unwanted but necessary roommate. Or a pet. Or vermin he didn’t have the heart to exterminate. 

At least the spirit wasn’t malevolent, anyway. 

Kyle couldn’t believe he was indulging the stupidness of the situation. Ghosts _weren’t_ real. They couldn’t be, it didn’t make any sense. And yet _something_ was definitely communicating with him. Something was moving his belonging and tucking him into bed ( _yes, that_ was _a step too far, ghost!_ ) and phoning him at unsociable hours. 

Although, come to think of it, his cell only ever rang if he was awake. He glanced at the clock now. It was five AM. It had been the creaking floorboard that had woken him, not the blare of his ringtone. 

So, perhaps, the menace of a spirit was at least a little considerate. 

His phone rang. 

…Or maybe not. 

Kyle stared at the blaring object for almost a whole minute before answering. As ridiculous as this entire situation was, Kyle found himself intrigued. It wasn’t everyday that one found themselves in such a bizarre situation. Not even someone who’d grown up in South Park. 

“Hello?” 

“Hey, dude,” the ghost said. It was the same lyrical voice as before. Annoyingly, it was the kind of voice Kyle could happily listen to forever. Soft as butter, he felt as if he could melt into it and unwind after long, stressful days. 

“So?” Kyle said, a little bluntly. “Who are you? Really.”

“Name’s Kenny.” 

“Kenny,” Kyle repeated, testing the name. It was bizarre how it seemed to suit what Kyle knew of the mischievous being that haunted his house. “And how old are you, Kenny?”

“Depends what age you’re asking for,” the ghost said, his tone mischievous. When Kyle frowned, Kenny continued without prompting. He was definitely in the same room then. Kyle really needed to have privacy words with his unwanted intruder. “Technically I’m forever twenty-four. But if I was somehow still alive today, I’d be one-hundred-sixteen.”

“Twenty-four! Jesus, you were so young.” 

“You can’t be much older, babyface.”

Kyle snorted unattractively. He couldn’t help it. “ _Babyface_?” 

“Hey. You’re cute and I’m out of practise. Don’t judge me.” It wouldn’t surprise Kyle if Kenny was holding up his hands in defence right now. 

Kyle gave another low chuckle. “I’m twenty-seven.”

“And you’re already an overworked lawyer?” Kenny whistled. 

“I’m smart.”

“Modest, too.” 

“I try my best.” Kyle yawned and glanced at his clock again. He wasn’t sure his boss would accept talking to a ghost as an excuse for being late to work. “Why’ve you been screwing with me?”

“I wish,” Kenny said wistfully and Kyle wished he could slap him. “It’s boring as a ghost. Gotta get my kicks in somehow. Besides, I’ve mainly just been looking out for you.”

“Looking out for me? _Seriously?!_ ” 

“Well, yeah.”

“You call phoning me at unreasonable hours and hiding my laptop looking out for me?” 

“Yes,” Kenny said stubbornly. Kyle didn’t bother to argue. 

“Stop watching me naked!” he said instead. 

“No can do. Have you _seen_ your ass? Dude, it’s outta this world. A dead guys gotta get his kicks somehow.” Oh god, how Kyle wished this was just an ordinary phone call right now. He could feel his face flushing at the compliment and he was _sure_ Kenny was loving it. Apparently his traitorous body didn’t give a damn that said compliment had come from an apparent ghost. 

“It makes me feel uncomfortable.” 

“Weak. Don’t play the guilt card, dude.” Kyle could almost hear Kenny’s pout. The was a pause and then Kenny asked, a little childishly, “Does it really?”

“Yes.”

“Aw, man. Sorry. I’ll stop.” 

That was unexpected. Of course, there was every chance that Kenny was just _saying_ it and wouldn’t actually follow through, but Kyle could definitely hear a layer of guilt in his voice. 

Kyle pursed his lips. “Are you _really_ a ghost?”

“Last I checked.”

“Is that why I can’t see you?”

“You can’t see me because you don’t _want_ to see me.” 

“Why wouldn’t I want to see you? This whole situation is so fucked up. I’m not best pleased about having an invisible house mate, you know.” 

“You don’t believe in me. You’re harbouring too much doubt. You seem like the type who probably thinks he’s just cracking up from overworking, which you _do_ do, man! If you’re not careful, you’ll drop dead soon and be forever stuck in this house with me. Not that I’d mind…” He trailed off suggestively. Kyle chose to ignore the flirting.

“Is that what happens? You die and you’re just trapped wherever it happened?” That was pretty damn morbid. Also, Hell had been proven to exist several times during his childhood; why would Hell exist if spirits didn’t move on?

“No idea. It’s what happened to me.”

“Maybe you have unfinished business?”

“Maybe you can help with that…” There was that suggestive tone again. Part of Kyle wanted to hang up his cell and rush off to work where, hopefully, Kenny couldn’t follow. Another part of him was almost-kinda-slightly enjoying the attention, though. And, man, did that piss him off. Mostly, because Kenny was right. It was starting to look like this was all in his overtired head. Boy was it depressing to know the only person willing to flirt with him was his own damn subconscious. 

“I have to go,” Kyle said abruptly.

“Aw, please don’t! I promise I’ll behave.” Figment of his imagination or not, Kenny definitely sounded disappointed. Kyle didn’t really know why it bothered him, he had no problem being heartless towards everyone else, but this mysterious, beautiful voice… It didn’t sit well with Kyle making it crack with disappointment. 

“I have to get ready for work,” he said firmly, as much for his own sake as Kenny’s. “Maybe we can talk again tonight.”

“You mean it?” Kenny voice lit up. 

“I mean, I don’t really have much of a choice, do I? Whether you’re real or not, I’m stuck with you.” _For now at least._

“You could sound a little bit happier about it. I’m a pretty cool dude.”

“I still want to know why a ‘ghost’ from the nineteen hundreds talks like you do.”

“If you promise to answer your phone later, maybe I’ll tell you,” Kenny said. 

“Okay.” What the hell. There would be no harm in humouring this odd occurrence for a little while. At least until he had time to get a decent nights sleep. Maybe if it continued after that he should see a psychiatrist, though.

“It’s a date!” Kenny said happily. 

 

Considering he was eighty percent certain that Kenny was a figment of his imagination (he was fifteen percent that it was some kind of badly thought out prank and five percent that maybe, possibly, Kenny was a real ghost.) Kyle found himself excited for work to end so that he could get home. He was curious to learn more about his ghostly roommate. He didn’t consider himself to be a particularly creative person so it would be intriguing to see what his mind would construct.

Of course, that meant the day dragged and he ended up having to do three hours overtime. By the time he got home it had gone ten and he was hungry, exhausted and irritable. 

There was four day old takeout in his fridge. Kyle gave it a weary sniff before shoving it in the microwave. 

As he sat down to eat, his phone beeped. 

_You shouldn’t eat that junk._

Kyle didn’t reply. He shoved a forkful of noodles into his mouth. 

_Maybe you just want to join me faster? I know I’m irresistible ;)_

Kyle snorted at that. “In your dreams.”

_You are ;)_

He rolled his eyes, bad mood dissolving as he pushed his plate to one side. He couldn’t believe he was humouring this weird situation and, even worse, that he was enjoying himself doing so. He had to be more delirious from lack of sleep than he’d realised. 

_That so?_

_Oh, look who can spell. I was starting to wonder._

_Dude, you’ve literally stolen my laptop that I was using to write /words/ with multiple times._

It was true that it was the first time Kyle had actually replied to one of his ghostly roommates texts any way other than out loud, though. He wasn’t sure whether that meant he was coming round to the idea or whether he was just done fighting. Either way, he’d allowed himself this busy period at work to enjoy whatever the hell this was. After that… well, who knows.

_So you don’t think you’re going crazy anymore?_

_Oh, I’m /sure/ of it. But you’re easier to blame than myself._

_Happy to help :)_

Kyle didn’t know whether it was because he’d starved himself of dating of any kind for far too long or not, but he was very much enjoying the attention Kenny was showering upon him. He even found himself forgetting that the chances of the interactions actually happening outside his exhausted mind were slim and just started having fun. Heaven knows he needed some fun. 

His job was rewarding and, for the most part, Kyle _did_ love it, but hell if it left him lonely and miserable a lot of the time. He didn’t see his family or friends anywhere near as much as he’d like. He barely even saw his own house as much as he’d like and – bargain or not – he’d spent too much damn money on the place to never be there. 

Talking to Kenny now he realised that he’d been lonely. He’d assured everyone – including himself – that it wouldn’t be the case and, for a while, he’d believed it. It had been nice even, to get a break from everyone. He hadn’t noticed his loneliness building up, hadn’t realised it was starting to suffocate him, until that very morning when he’d properly spoken to Kenny for the first time. 

If he stopped to think about it, he’d realise just how much more depressing it was that this was all in his head. 

_Can I phone you?_

_Please_

He’d barely hit send before his cell started ringing. He wondered whether Kenny was lingering over his shoulder, reading the messages he’d been sending as he typed them. 

He wondered whether he minded. 

“Hey, dude.”

“Hi,” Kyle said. And then, because he wasn’t really sure what else to say, he added “How was your day?”

Kenny laughed. “Sorry,” he said, when he managed to control himself. “Just not a question I get asked a lot.”

Kyle instantly felt bad. What even _did_ Kenny do with himself while he wasn’t talking to Kyle? He imagined it must be pretty boring being a ghost. Perhaps, in a sense, they were similar. Both of them leading lonely existences and finding some sort of release from that loneliness in one another. 

“I watched a lot of television,” Kenny said, answering Kyle’s question before he could retract it. “Your flatscreen is something else, man. I had a TV for a while but it was nothing compared to that. It was so big that for an embarrassingly long time I thought the people were actually behind the screen.”

“Where’d you get a TV from?” At least Kenny having access to a TV explained some of his out of time use of language and superior knowledge of technology. 

“John bought it for me.”

“Who’s John?” 

“He was the last owner of this house.”

“The man who never moved in?”

“That’s the one. He bought the place for me, so that it wouldn’t end up getting demolished or anything.”

“Would you vanish if that happened?”

“No idea. I can’t leave though, so it seems likely. Like my soul is tied to the place or something.”

“Oh.” Kyle didn’t really know what to say to that. Then again, weren’t ghosts meant to pass on? Maybe Kenny being forced to move on would ultimately be a good thing. 

As if reading his mind, Kenny said “I’m not ready to pass on yet.”

“Okay.” It was as simple as that. Kyle didn’t feel particularly inclined to try and change the ghosts mind. Instead he got to his feet, keeping the phone pressed to his cheek.

“Where’re you going?” 

“Bed. Don’t worry, we can still chat for a bit. I still want to know how you’ve been texting me and sending me bloody memes from my house phone!” 

“If I told ya, I’d have to kill ya.” 

Kyle rolled his eyes. “I’m gonna get changed now. Don’t watch.” 

Putting his cell on speaker, he placed it down on his dresser. Kyle unbuttoned his shirt, sliding it off his shoulders. He briefly wondered whether his ghostly roomie was keeping to his promise not to spy on him changing anymore. He wandered into his bathroom to clean his teeth and, by the time he picked up his phone and climbed into bed, he was worried he would fall asleep before he could get any real answers from Kenny. He left it on speaker, so at the very least he didn’t have to worry about trying to hold it to his ear.

“You should sleep, dude.”

“In a bit. You promised you’d tell me about yourself.”

“And I will do. But right now you need sleep. You’re overworking yourself, I’m actually kinda worried for you.”

“It’ll calm down,” Kyle said, suppressing a giant yawn. He _hoped_ it would calm down. 

“I hope so. It’s almost painful to watch.”

“S’not fair you know,” Kyle said sleepily. His eyes were already starting to close, too heavy to keep open. 

“What’s not?”

“That you can see me but I can’t see you.”

“Then hurry up and accept that I’m real,” Kenny said softly. 

Kyle was already asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was gonna have Kyle and Kenny the same age but seeing as they were born in different centuries I think there’s something kinda heartbreaking about Kenny being forever young as Kyle gets older each day. 
> 
> _Images were found on google and do not belong to me._


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh, I am so ill. If this chapter doesn’t make sense I promise I’ll take another look at it when I’m better.
> 
> Time for a little spooky. _woooooooo_

Outside it was thundering. The power was out but the flashes of lighting that illuminated the nights sky with crackling flashes were so frequent that Kyle was having no problem navigating his kitchen for the emergency candles his mom had forced into his hands the day he’d officially moved. At the time he’d rolled his eyes and shoved them into the back of a drawer but now he was eternally grateful for his overbearing mother and her foresight. 

Finding where he’d left the matches was more of a challenge but apparently Kenny had him covered. When Kyle, frustrated and cold, slammed shut the last kitchen drawer and turned around, there were the matches, sitting proudly on the table as if they’d been waiting there all along. 

Kyle groaned. 

_Thanks,_ he texted his ghostly companion, _but next time maybe don’t make me search the whole kitchen first?_

_I was enjoying the view ;)_

Kyle rolled his eyes. _Of course_ Kenny would leave him hunched over searching through cupboards and drawers just so he could get a good view of his ass. 

“Thanks for that.” 

Kyle struck a match against the box and lit the nearest candle. As the dull, flicker light illuminated his surroundings, he almost jumped out of his skin as he spied a silhouette of a man standing in the doorway. In his shock, the candle slipped from his grip and hit the floor with a light thud, plunging the room back into darkness. 

His phone rang. 

“What’s the matter?” Kenny asked quickly, before Kyle could even say hello. He put the phone on speaker, set it down and got to work with reclaiming the candle. 

“Were you standing in the doorway just now?”

“No,” Kenny said, sounding concerned. “Why?”

“Oh,” Kyle frowned, “nothing. I just thought I saw something.” 

“Like what?” 

“I dunno. A person. It’s dark, it was just my imagination.” 

Another flash of lighting lit up the room and Kyle made a grab for the candle. 

Kenny let out an uncertain hum. 

“Just for the record, where _are_ you?” 

“Sitting on the table.”

Kyle frowned deeply. “The table I was just standing in front of?”

“Yup,” Kenny said cheekily, popping the p. “It was all a little sensual really. I almost kissed you.” 

Figment of his imagination or not, Kyle really wished he could see Kenny. If nothing else, it would stop embarrassing situations like this. “You could have said something.”

“Why would I?” Kenny asked. “You have a really cute nose, you know.”

“It’s a nose,” Kyle said, turning away from the table so that Kenny wouldn’t see his cheeks heat up. Apparently it didn’t make a blind bit of difference to Kenny whether the room was dark or not. 

“It is indeed. You’re a genius. Shall we try the other facial features now? Do you know what is above the nose? They come in pairs and start with the letter ‘e’.”

“Oh sod off.”

“Yeah, you’re right, too easy. How about further down, then? I’m thinking between the legs – ”

“Please stop,” Kyle said quickly, though his smile betrayed him. 

Desperate to escape Kenny’s advances (although not actually wanting to escape Kenny) Kyle slid the matches into his pocket and then picked up his phone, carrying it, along with the candle, into his lounge where he got to work at building a fire in the grate. 

“Have you ever built a fire before?” Kenny asked, amused, after a short silence in which he was clearly enjoying watching Kyle’s struggles. 

“Yes,” Kyle snapped. He didn’t bother to add that he hadn’t built a fire since he was about twelve, camping out with Stan in the Colorado mountains. It took him a few attempts to get the timber to catch – all the while with Kenny cheering him on – but, eventually, he held up his chilled fingers to the glowing flames of a successful fire. 

Over the crackling of burning wood, he could hear the wind outside howl through trees branches and the pounding of rain against his windows. A low rumble of thunder sounded in the distance, proving that the storm was finally passing. All around him the house creaked and groaned, noisier than usual, as if it were protesting the quieting storm outside. 

If he listened hard enough, he might have even heard the creak of the floorboard by his bed, upstairs. 

But he wasn’t listening. His attention was consumed by the presence of the being he could not see. 

“Where are you?” He knew Kenny was nearby. He wasn’t sure what made him certain, other than the fact that Kenny always seemed to be close, but it was like he could feel it in his bones. It may have only been a few days since they had properly started talking but, already, Kyle couldn’t imagine being alone in the house too big for one. There was something about Kenny, something about his bright and bubbly personality, that filled the house, turning its dark corners bright. Something that made Kyle want to rush home from work and wait until the last minute each morning to leave. 

Despite all this, he was still mostly certain that his lonely, over-tired mind had created Kenny and that, eventually, he’d have to admit he was cracking up and seek help. Right now, though, he enjoyed the company too much to care if it meant he was insane or not. If he was happy, did it really matter? If he wasn’t a danger to anyone then who cares, really. 

“Right next to you,” Kenny replied softly. “Can you feel this?” 

Kyle waited but nothing happened. He felt something in his chest sink a little. “What are you doing?” 

“Holding your hand.” It was probably the placebo effect but, after Kenny’s answer, Kyle felt as if he could feel something slightly chilly pressed atop of the hand resting to his left. He smiled softly, his gaze staying firmly fixed on the glowing embers before him. 

There was something about Kenny that Kyle couldn’t put his finger on. The ghost made him feel… complete, almost. Certainly less lonely, but it was more than that. Kyle had always been a hard worker, the type of person that strived for the best in life and pushed himself to his limits to achieve that best. It often meant that, as he pushed for his own future, he pushed people who might have supported him along the way out. Along his journey, Stan had been one of the only constants in his life and, until Kenny had shown up, Kyle hadn’t realised how lonely that made him. 

He only wished he could see him.

Kenny kept claiming that if Kyle truly accepted him as real, he would finally be able to actually see him but, pragmatic as he were, Kyle was having a hard time accepting that Kenny wasn’t a figment of his imagination. If he were honest, Kenny seemed too perfect to be real. Too funny, smart and caring. What were the chances that the perfect person for Kyle would just happen to reside in the house he bought. 

And then there was the problem that, if Kenny _were_ real, then he was dead and their friendship would only ever be very limited. Kenny would forever be twenty-four while Kyle grew older with every single day that passed.

“Why’re you looking so serious?” 

“Hm? Oh,” Kyle wasn’t sure how to answer. He was sure it hadn’t exactly slipped Kenny’s noticed that he had to watch everyone around him grow old and die but it wasn’t the most tactful or pleasant of conversations. He had to say something, though. So he chose a topic that was, perhaps, a little safer. One he’d been curious about these past few days. “I was wondering… How did you die? If you don’t mind me asking.” He tagged the last bit on in a rushed, awkward tone, suddenly realising that it probably wasn’t the politest question to ask. 

Kenny just laughed, apparently unbothered. “I was murdered.”

“Murdered?” No, that wasn’t right. Fell, the estate agent had said, _not_ pushed. “But I thought – ”

“It was deemed an accident.” Kyle could practically hear the shrug in his ghostly companions voice. How could one be so nonchalant about their own murder? Kyle was certain that if their situations were reversed, he would still be both furious and plotting the revenge he’d probably never managed to follow through on. 

“What happened?” Kyle asked softly. As he stared into the flames, he felt his hands curling into fists. From what he knew about Kenny, he had created a mental image and that mental image was of a small, charming, harmless individual; the sort of person who should be protected. The idea that somebody had purposely taken his life… It made Kyle angry. _Furious_ , even. 

“I was from a poor family,” Kenny started. Watching the fire as he were, Kyle could almost pretend that Kenny was sitting next to him for real and not only able to communicate through the speaker of his cell phone. “But, what can I say, I was pretty damn gorgeous-”

Kyle snorted at that. Not because he doubted it but because Kenny simply had no modesty. He was quite happy to blow his own trumpet and Kyle could help but be completely enamoured by it all. 

“Hey! It’s true!” 

“I don’t doubt it.”

“ _Aha!_ Knew you fancied me!”

Kyle wished there was a physical being he could shove playfully. Instead he settled for snorted again, with a lazy eye roll for good measure. “Please continue, Oh Gorgeous One.”

It was Kenny’s turn to snort but, once his laughter dialled down, he did as requested and continued his story. 

“Anyway, the lady who lived in this house was young, beautiful and lonely; her husband was somewhat of a big deal and worked away a lot.”

“What did he do?” Kyle asked curiously.

“I never asked.”

“Right. Of course you didn’t.” He rolled his eyes again. Kenny definitely seemed like the kind of guy who wouldn’t care about those details. He could see where this story was going and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it. It was different times, he tried to remind himself, and he didn’t know Kenny’s living situation. Who was he to judge? 

“Leslie was gorgeous. I was quite happy to keep her ‘company’ and not ask questions. Was it wrong? Of course. But it was a different world back then, Kyle. I did what I needed to do to survive, and to help out my family. When I started visiting Leslie, my brother had just had a son – John – and -”

“-Wait,” Kyle interrupted, frowning. “John as in-”

“Yup.”

“The last owner was your nephew?”

“He was.” 

Well that explained things. Kyle had wondered why someone would buy the house but never live in it. And, from the little Kenny had told him, John had looked out for him, even come to visit when he could. Being a family member made so much more sense than just the random kindness of a stranger. 

“He was five when I died. Just old enough to have a few memories of me. And just curious enough to ask questions. When he was fourteen, he broke into the house – then empty – with a friend. He could see me from the get go, though his friend never did. He believed in me even less than you do.”

“I believe in you,” Kyle said quickly.

“Of course you do. Where am I, then?” 

Kyle pouted and didn’t answer. Because yes, according to Kenny, the only way for Kyle to see him was to believe – _truly_ believe. It wasn’t that Kyle didn’t _want_ to believe, but he was logical to a fault and skepticism fell under that category. It was easier to believe he was going crazy than accept that maybe there was more to the world than science and logic suggested. 

“Don’t worry. We have time,” Kenny said. He sounded sad, though, as if he wasn’t too sure he believed his own words.

Kyle nodded. 

Outside the storm had finally started to calm but, inside of Kyle, it still ravaged. He was angry at himself for being so damn stubborn and logical. Here he had someone in his life who made him happy, who he enjoyed talking to, who was opening up to him about horrible things in his past, and yet a part of him fought it. A part of him denied Kenny’s existence despite all the evidence before him. If nothing else, it upset Kyle to know that his denial hurt Kenny. 

“So what happened next?” he asked after a short silence. Kyle hated silences with Kenny. It made it seem as if he were alone. 

“With Leslie or John?”

“Both. Either.” He just wanted to hear Kenny’s lyrical voice. He just wanted to know he wasn’t alone. 

“Hmm, well…” Kenny took a moment to figure out where he’d been before they had gotten sidetracked. “I spent a year with Leslie. It was so much more than sex – I’m aware I sound like I was her prostitute – and I’m not gonna lie, I fell in love with her. It was laughable, really. She was a lady and I was, well, nothing. Of course, she sent me packing when she realised what was happening but by then it was too late. We were both in too deep. I’d have felt terrible about what we did, but her husband was an awful man. He was fifteen years older than her and treated her like crap. I foolishly thought I could save her.”

“So the husband found out and killed you?” Kyle asked when Kenny stopped talking. 

Kenny laughed humourlessly. “I wish. It took me years, but eventually I discovered Leslie wasn’t the abused wife I thought she was. She had been manipulating me and her husband both. Yes, he hurt her but only because she played the role of a meek, obedient house wife. In actuality she was biding her time, waiting to act. It was pretty impressive, really, everything she had planned. Murder, embezzlement, the works. 

“When I figured out what she was up to I confronted her. At first she asked me to stay by her side, but her plans would have destroyed the lives of hundreds of people like my own family. Even with her promise to look after my family, to keep them out of her plans, I couldn’t allow it. I threatened to expose her. We fought. 

“I suppose my actual death was manslaughter, but if she hadn’t of successfully killed me with that lucky push, you can bet your ass she would have gotten me another way. She didn’t want me spoiling her plans and telling anyone. Unfortunately for her, I’d already sent a letter her husbands’ way. I told him everything.”

“Damn,” Kyle said, both impressed and horrified. “It’s like something out of a movie.” And it was. Super villains, evil plots and murder. These sort of things weren’t meant to happen outside of the movies. And yet, Kenny had lived – and died – through all of that. “Did Leslie at least get what she deserved?”

“Her husband cleaned up her mess, spinning some bullshit story that the banister had been old and in desperate need for fixing for a long time. He paid my family for their silence – not that they knew a lot – and then he sold the house and dragged Leslie away. John told me years later that there were rumours he’d locked her away in an asylum but we could never find any proof.”

“Jesus.” 

“So that’s my tale of woe,” Kenny said almost playfully. Kyle wondered whether joking about it made it easier for the ghost or whether it really had been long enough that he’d simply gotten over it. “Did it move you enough to want to jump my bones?”

“Dude, you’re a ghost. Even if I _wanted_ to – which I don’t – I couldn’t.”

“And _that_ is the biggest tragedy of them all.” 

Kyle laughed again, not noticing the distorting silhouette attached to the wall that moved to his left, like a person was walking behind him and the firelight was warping their shadow. He felt like, around Kenny, he laughed a lot. Even when discussing something so tragic, Kenny could still make him laugh. Kyle himself wasn’t sure he’d be able to joke about his own death so lightly, especially not if he’d been murdered. It took a certain kind of person, one that he most certainly was _not._

He stopped laughing when he realised Kenny had fallen silent but, when he opened his mouth to speak, several things happened simultaneously:

As the pipes behind the walls groaned loudly in protest, there was a flicker above him and Kyle blinked in surprise as a sudden brightness filled the room. 

The electricity was back on. His house was starting up again. All sinister shadows were instantly gone. 

At the same time, his cell beeped, warning him that he was on his last fifteen percent of battery. “Well, that was good timing,” he said, standing up to find his charger. 

“Actually, dude, I need to go,” Kenny said. 

Kyle frowned. Kenny was never busy. He was a ghost (or a figment of his own imagination) – what did either of those things have to keep them busy? 

“You do?”

“Well, yeah. I have a life too. Sort of.” There was something wrong with Kenny’s voice. He sounded distracted, his light tone coming across forced. 

“You okay, dude?” 

“Yeah. ‘Course. You need to get some sleep, anyway.”

Kyle’s frown deepened but he nodded regardless. He had another busy day at the office in the morning after all. 

Kenny was probably just caught in the memories he’d just shared. Perhaps he wasn’t quite as thick skinned as he liked to pretend. It was a relief, to be honest, to know that Kenny was just as human as he was. Figuratively speaking, of course because whatever ghosts were, they weren’t quite human. 

“Okay,” he said after a moments hesitation. “Have a nice night.”

“You too,” Kenny said, voice sounding distant, as if he had wandered away from whatever the hell it was he used to call Kyle on, having forgotten to hang up. Kyle waited for a moment but when he heard nothing further, he ended the call himself, staring at his dying cell for a moment, thoroughly confused. They hadn’t been talking for long, but not once before had Kenny been the one to want to end the call first, unless it was to usher Kyle to sleep because he was about to collapse from exhaustion. 

Kyle glanced at the time. It was five to midnight; an early night for him if he took Kenny’s advice and went to sleep. 

He stood, brushing down his jeans as if he were also trying to brush away the uncertainty Kenny’s unexpected departure had left with him. 

 

The next evening, Kenny brushed off his concerns with a laugh. 

“Were you really concerned?” he teased.

“No,” Kyle said stubbornly. He was in the process of heating last nights leftovers, his fully charged cell on speaker to his left.

“Aw.” Kyle imaged Kenny pouting. Not for the first time, he wished he knew what his roommate looked like. It was hard to visualise somebody when all you had to go on was their voice and that, apparently, he was ‘pretty damn gorgeous’. Yes, he had created his own mental image but it was probably about as accurate as Stan’s claims that Butters wasn’t mad at him every time he had to reschedule date night. 

“What colour are your eyes?” Kyle asked suddenly, just before his microwave pinged. 

“Huh?”

“Your eyes. What colour?” 

“I can’t remember.” He said it so casually that Kyle paused in his tracks.

“You… can’t remember?”

“Dude, I’m a ghost. It’s not like I have a reflection or anything.”

“I thought that was vampires.” 

“Well then, maybe I’m a vampire.” His voice was a little clipped, as if they conversation made him uncomfortable. Kyle decided to drop it. He didn’t particularly want to piss off the invisible person who could make his life a living hell. Kenny had been quite well behaved recently; Kyle didn’t really want to return to the game of hide and seek the ghost had forced him into those first few weeks. 

Maybe it was too late for that, though.

“Where’s my coffee?” Kyle asked aloud. While his food had been heating, he had made himself a coffee and left it on the side. 

It was gone.

“Hell if I know.” 

“Oh come on. I thought we were passed these stupid games.” He’d just worked a twelve hour day. He needed a goddamn cup of coffee. 

“I didn’t do anything to it, dude.” 

“What’s gotten into you recently?” Kyle demanded, running a frustrated hand though his wild hair. Kenny was definitely behaving suspiciously different to what Kyle had grown used to. Gone was the light, playful vibe of his tone, replaced instead with clipped, almost distracted replies. 

“Nothing,” Kenny said shortly. “I’m fine.”

“Clearly.” 

It was childish, but he was hungry, tired and severely lacking on the caffeine front and so Kyle did what any mature adult would do and hung up the phone. 

“Asshole,” he muttered under his breath. He regretted it instantly. Inhaling deeply, Kyle rubbed at his forehead, allowing himself a second to calm down. Sufficiently collected, he spoke out to the seemingly empty room. “…I’m sorry, dude. Call me back?” 

Nothing happened. 

“Fine. Be like that.” 

 

The next week had Kyle in a foul temper. Kenny was being distant, only replying to a handful of texts and Kyle had absolutely no idea what he’d done wrong. He replayed the last semi decent conversation he’d had with Kenny in his head multiple times but came up blank each time. He couldn’t see anything wrong with anything he’d said, and his ghostly roommate was supplying no answers. 

If that wasn’t bad enough, though, while he might be giving Kyle the silent treatment, he was being otherwise rather loud and disruptive. 

During the evenings when Kyle would be sitting at his laptop, working, their would be scraping noises coming from above him. The sort of noises made by heavy furniture being dragged across a room but, whenever he checked, everything was in place. 

Loud thuds woke him during the night. Sometimes, while he lay, still half asleep and uncertain whether the crash had been Kenny or some other intruder, he would hear shuffling footsteps. His heart would start racing, because surely even if he _were_ pissed off at something, Kenny wouldn’t purposely scare him. 

As he wondered on that matter, in the gloom, he would see a looming dark figure. 

It was always gone when he turned on the light, though. 

_It’s just your mind playing tricks on you…_

Some nights, when he was lying awake in bed, desperately trying to shut off his brain and get some _goddamn_ sleep, he would hear a dripping.

_Drip drip drip._

Or, if not a dripping, then heaving breathing. 

It was safe to say he wasn’t getting much sleep. 

“You’re a real dick, you know,” he said to the empty room, exactly a week after he’d had the argument with Kenny. “I know halloween is coming up but you don’t need – ”

His phone beeped. 

_It’s not me, Kyle._

“Bullshit,” Kyle said as he read the text message. 

His phone beeped again.

 _Run._

“Har har,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. He didn’t want Kenny to know he was successfully creeping him out. “Finally decided to try and run me out like all the past owners? Well, I’m not going anywhere. You’re stuck with me.”

 _Drip drip drip._

Where even was that damn leak coming from?! 

His phone beeped once more. Kyle, who had been focusing on the dripping sound, trying to locate its source, jumped at the suddenness of it. 

_Please. Trust me, Ky_

“How can I trust you when you’re not even real?” Kyle asked the empty room.

He didn’t know what it was he was afraid of; didn’t know why he refused so adamantly to accept that clearly there was something unexplainable happening. Kenny was too real, too vibrate and full of personality to be a creation of his own, boring imagination. Even if he was going crazy, he was not creative enough to make up _Kenny._

The bulb in his lamp popped, blowing out and plunging him back into sudden darkness. 

“Kenny?!” 

“Kyle!” The cry was so distant he almost couldn’t be certain he’d heard it at all. 

He squinted through the darkness, spying the looming, humanoid shape by the door. Had he left his coat hanging there? He couldn’t remember. 

With fumbling hands, he turned on the flashlight on his cell. 

There was nobody standing by his door. 

There was no coat, either. 

 

The next night there was a loud crash. It sounded almost like something heavy – heavy like a body – falling from the second floor to the one below. It woke Kyle with a start. 

“Kenny?” he called out into the darkness, barely hearing his own words over the thudding of his erratic heart. 

He was met with silence. 

Picking up his cell and turning on the flashlight, he carefully stepped out of bed. The usual floorboards creaked loudly in protest as he left his room and made his way down the hallway. 

“Kenny?” He kept his voice low, though he wasn’t sure what he was afraid of. Every time he’d believed that perhaps it was an intruder rather than his ghostly roommate, he was met with absolutely no proof that anybody else had even momentarily been inside his house. It was unlikely that tonight would be any different. It wasn’t like he had much worth stealing after all. 

He stopped walking as he neared the staircase. Dread filled him so fully he was almost drowning in it. 

His heart, which had apparently moved and was now located between his ears, was drumming so loudly he couldn’t hear anything else. 

His palms sweated and his mouth grew dry. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. 

The railing that fenced off the open landing was broken. 

As he took a hesitant step forward and peered down, he saw that the crash he’d heard, for once, hadn’t been nothing. 

The banister rail was a smashed, splintered mess in the grand hallway below. 

As his flashlight settled slightly in his trembling hands he noticed that the usually white railings were splattered with something dark. 

Something dark that looked suspiciously like blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don’t worry, things won’t stay bad for long. There’s only two chapters left so... :P


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m not gonna say I hate this chapter but... xD I struggled to write it is all I’m saying. It fought me every step of the way and could probably use waaaay more editing than I have time to give it. 
> 
> I will say that I’m overwhelmed by you guys, though. All the lovely comments and kudos y’all leaving, it all really makes my day <3

The house was eerily quiet. Kyle, who had gotten used to the groaning pipes and creaking floorboards, couldn’t stand it one bit. He loathed the thought that Kenny was solely responsible for the old houses character but, without the ghost around, even the floorboard by his bed stopped creaking. Perhaps the house was mourning his loss; Kenny had been living there for over ninety years, after all. Perhaps, like Kyle, the house didn’t know how to deal with life after him. 

And Kenny was definitely gone, Kyle had no doubt about that. He’d sent text after text. He’d phoned repeatedly, only for his own house phone to ring and ring until he finally gave up. He’d called out, again and again. He’d acted indifferent, he’d snapped, he’d begged. He’d even spent an afternoon (an afternoon he was _meant_ to be working from home) posing around the house stark naked because he was _sure_ there was no way Kenny could witness that and remain silent. 

Nothing. 

Not a damn peep. 

Kyle was going out of his mind with worry. He’d finally started to accept that maybe Kenny was real and then the bastard had to up and go, leaving only a mess behind.

Except, Kyle didn’t believe for a minute that Kenny had gone willingly. Everything was too strange. Kenny had warned him to run. There had been crashes and bangs. There was that… crime scene. The one that Kyle could only imagine was a recreation of Kenny’s very own death. 

Then there was that ghostly, looming figure he’d seen. The one Kenny had claimed was not him. The one Kyle had decided, at the time, that he’d imagined. He hadn’t imagined it. He knew that now. 

No, Kenny hadn’t left willingly. 

Something had taken him. 

The problem was, after taking him, all the strange occurrences had stopped. The house had never been so silent. The strange dripping he couldn’t source vanished. His phone no longer constant beeped with new messages. Even the creaky floorboards dialled it down, as if they’d been louder to compete with the mischievous spirit that lived among them. 

“Dude, what’s up?” Stan asked as soon as Kyle let him through the front door. “You look like crap.”

“I haven’t been sleeping,” Kyle said, shrugging. Then, all business, he shoved his cell at his super best friend. “I need you to check something for me.”

“Uh, sure?” Stan accepted the cell and looked at the tired red head wearily. Kyle had purple bruising under eyes that were almost red from lack of sleep. His curls were limp and greasy, sticking to his forehead. Stan knew Kyle well. He knew his overworked, sleep deprived self and this was not it. This was something else. There was something other than work keeping him awake all night. Something other than work demanding his full attention. 

Anyone who knew Kyle well knew that work was his life. If he was brushing his career aside, then it was for something that he deemed more important. Stan hadn’t known such a thing existed. 

“Can you look at my messages? I need you to tell me if there’s a comment thread from ‘home’.” 

Stan frowned but did as requested. 

“Yeah, dude, it’s there.” His eyes narrowed a little as he scrolled through the messages. “Have you met a guy? Why’d you save him as ‘home’?” 

“You can stop reading now,” Kyle said, making a grab for his cell. He had spent more time talking to Kenny on the phone than texting, but that didn’t mean there weren’t some private things they’d sent one another that he didn’t want anyone – including and maybe even _especially_ Stan – seeing. 

Stan, the bastard, moved the cell out of reach, his eyes continuing to skim the chain of texts. “He sends you a lot of lame chat up lines, dude. Like, seriously lame.”

Kyle snatched back his phone and glanced at the screen. 

_Are those space pants? ‘Cus your ass is outta this world._

He might have laughed again if he wasn’t too damn worried about Kenny. 

“Why’d you ask me if I could see the messages, dude?” Kyle’s weird request seemed to only just be hitting Stan. Kyle wasn’t really sure how to answer the question without sounding crazy, so he just went for it, fessing up everything he’d held close to his chest since he’d first started to notice odd occurrences after moving in. 

The fact that Stan could see the messages meant that he had not been crazy. Kenny had never been a figment of his over tired brain. He was real and Kyle had realised that fact far too late. 

Now he needed help getting his roommate back. 

“Do you believe me?” he asked Stan after he finished his story and a long silence hung heavily in the air. “It’s okay if you don’t. I _definitely_ wouldn’t believe me.”

“Dude, are you serious? We grew up in South Park. I’m friends with Jesus Christ, Satan, a talking towel and a lump of poo. Why _wouldn’t_ I believe in ghosts?”

Well, he knew Stan was more open minded than himself, but Kyle certainly hadn’t expected that. He’d also never really looked at the situation that way before. Now he felt even stupider fo taking so long to believe Kenny was real. 

“It also helps that you’re the last person who would make up such a story. It doesn’t surprise me that you refused to believe the guy was real until it was too late. You’re so damn pragmatic it’s unreal.”

“I didn’t invite you here to insult me.” Kyle placed a mug of tea in front of Stan and took a sip of his own coffee. 

“Why _did_ you invite me here? To help summon your dead boyfriend back?”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Your messages and concern say different. Just saying.” 

Kyle just glared, his glower unfaltering. Unaffected, Stan just reached into his pocket and pulled out his own cell phone. Kyle watched with an arched eyebrow as he started writing something.

“What’re you doing?”

“Getting us an expert,” Stan said, not looking up from his screen. 

 

Henrietta Biggle stared down at her steaming mug of coffee as Kyle reluctantly finished telling her Kenny’s story. 

She didn’t say anything for a long while. Kyle stared expectantly between her, Stan and Butters, waiting for somebody to say something. 

After Stan had sent out his message, he’d phone Butters and, an hour later, the blond had knocked on the door with the with ex-goth girl in tow. Though, ex-goth might have been a stretch too far. Henrietta still wore almost entirely black and, seeing as she was Stan’s so called paranormal expert, still seemed to dabble in creepy shit. Kyle knew Stan had stayed in touch with the goths growing up but they were part of a separate world to him and he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted Henrietta wandering around his and Kenny’s house. 

“He’s been collected,” she said finally. Henrietta had the voice of someone who had been smoking every day since they were eight. It was almost a shame; she’d lost some of the excess weight she’d carried as a kid and Kyle would have been blind not to notice she looked good for it. Her voice, though, did not suit her. It was croaky and, Kyle wasn’t going to lie, a little creepy, like it belonged to someone forty years her senior. 

“Collected?” he repeated blankly. 

“Everything has its time. Kenny obviously achieved whatever he was hanging around for and – ”

“No,” Kyle said firmly. “No, that’s not it. Weren’t you listening? There was some creepy shit going on! Something was scaring him by the end.”

“I’m sure he just didn’t want to pass on. It’s not unusual.”

“You’re not listening!” Kyle slammed his fist down on the table, hard enough to splash his still full coffee. 

“Well jeez, Kyle. Maybe you should calm down a little, buddy?” Butters said, almost nervously. 

Kyle rounded angrily on Butters but, before he could even open his mouth he caught Stan’s eyes. The blue orbs were narrowed, silently informing Kyle to watch what he says next else suffer his wrath. Stan’s temper was usually fairly tepid – it was _Kyle_ who possessed the fire of a thousand demons and the right hook to match – but when it came to those closest to him, Stan could get scary and Kyle couldn’t really afford to piss off anyone willing to offer him help right now. 

He took a deep breath and held it. 

When he finally exhaled, he turned back to Henrietta. 

“I’m sorry but I think you’re wrong. I don’t think he was meant to go. I think he was dragged away kicking and screaming.” He paused, almost as if for dramatic affect and then added, “Come with me.” 

He stood, leaving behind his still untouched coffee. Henrietta took a sip of her own before following. Stan and Butters shared a tentative look before they, too, followed. 

It had been a week but he’d left the banister as it was. He hadn’t even shown Stan the mess, keeping him confined to the kitchen and dining area.

“Jesus, what happened?” Stan asked, glancing worriedly at Kyle as if he believed his friend had been the one to take the fall. 

“Oh boy, is that blood?” Butters asked nervously. 

“The night he vanished, I heard a crash. I found this. I’m almost certain it’s a recreation of his death.”

Henrietta pursed her lips, eyes narrowing as she took in the scene. 

“Have you tampered with it?” she asked. 

“No.” 

“ _Dude_ , this has been like this a week?!” 

Kyle and Henrietta ignored Stan. “Good,” she said. “That would make this harder.”

“Make what harder?”

Henrietta didn’t answer. She walked over to the pile of blood splattered, splintered wood, removing her black gloves as she walked. She tucked them into her pocket and then crouched down in front of the mess. 

Kyle opened her mouth to protest but there was something about the way she tentatively reached out. Her hesitance kept him quiet, kept him curious. 

The three males watched in silence as she seemed to reach out in slow motion. As her bare skin brushed the wood, Kyle tensed. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting or even why he was expecting it but it didn’t seem right for nothing to happen. 

Except nothing did. 

At least for a moment. 

Just as he was about to speak, to inquire why she was wasting their time, Henrietta’s eyes rolled back and her whole body tensed. She moved her mouth in silent conversation, no words breathing past her chapped lips. 

He took a step forward but Stan grabbed his arm. 

“She’s fine,” the noirette said. “I’ve seen her do this before.”

“What’s she doing?”

“ _Seeing_.” 

Well, that made literally no sense to Kyle. Still, he kept silent and watched. Waited. It wasn’t as if he had any better ideas. It wasn’t as if he had the first clue how to save Kenny from whatever had taken him. To save Kenny, he would take whatever help was offered. He didn’t really have a choice. 

A minute passed. 

Kyle was glad to see that Butters looked as uncomfortable as him with Henrietta’s rigid, unblinking form. The blond twisted his fingers in front of him, occasionally muttering ‘oh, boy.’ 

Henrietta’s shoulders jerked and she lost her balance, falling backwards onto her ass. As Stan rushed forward, she coughed and shook herself, blinking in rapid succession, probably to re-moisturise her eyes. 

“I’m fine.” She brushed Stan’s concern aside but accepted his hand up. She wobbled momentarily as she rightened herself but when it became clear that she wouldn’t fall again, Stan took a step backwards, giving her space. 

“What did you see?” he asked. 

Kyle glanced at his best friend again. He had questions. He wanted to know how the hell Stan seemed to know what was going on. It was almost like he’d done this, with Henrietta, before. 

It could wait, though. 

“Kyle’s right,” Henrietta said, sounding far less certain of herself now. “A malevolent spirit intruded the house, specifically seeking out Kenny.” Kyle’s heart sunk. It was one thing to know you were right but another entirely to have it confirmed. If that’s really what Henrietta was doing – it wouldn’t surprise Kyle if she was just making all this shit up for attention. He’d always suspected she had a little thing for Stan. “The thing is, I was partly right too.”

That grabbed his attention. “What?”

“The spirit that attacked him, it couldn’t have done it alone. Spirits can’t just wander wherever they like. They attach to something; people, places. Kenny was attached to this place.”

“So, did someone walk it in?” Stan asked. 

“Some _thing_ ,” Henrietta corrected. “Death.”

“Oh come off it!” Kyle snapped. This was getting ridiculous. 

“So you believe in ghosts but not Death?” Henrietta arched a dark eyebrow, folding her arms across her chest. 

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Kyle snapped back stubbornly.

Just Kenny. He believed in Kenny. 

Stan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Really, Kyle? Then what are we doing here?”

Kyle sighed, running a hand through his messy curls. He looked between his three guests and the mess at their feet. He needed to stop being so stubborn, it wasn’t helping anything. 

“Okay, I’ll bite,” he said finally, glancing at Henrietta with what he hoped was an apologetic look. “Explain what you meant. Um, please?”

“Basically, the spirit hitched a lift with Death. Perhaps he’d come to collect it and it offered him a deal he couldn’t resist? Either way, your malevolent spirit wasn’t going down without Kenny in tow. So yes, whatever, we were both right. It shouldn’t have been Kenny’s time, but Death took him anyway.”

“Gosh, but… surely Mr Death doesn’t usually create such a mess… right?”

Stan snorted and rolled his eyes. “You don’t have to call it _Mr_ Death, Butters.”

“Well, fella, if it’s all the same, I’d rather show some respect to the being that will eventually carry my spirit on to whatever’s next.”

As if the bizarre exchange wasn’t happening, Henrietta answered Butters question with a frown. “Not usually, no. I believe part of the agreement between the dark spirit and Death was that she got to play with his food before he ate it.”

“She?” Kyle asked nervously. 

“Oh yes. It was definitely a female.” 

_Leslie._ It had to be. 

It seemed awfully coincidental that just days after Kenny had told him about the lady of the house, she was showing up to steal Kenny away from him, though. Almost as if talking about her had summoned her. Maybe it _had_. Maybe she hadn’t been thought about in so long she barely existed and then, suddenly, Kenny was talking about her, breathing life into her again with words, giving her enough fuel to bargain with death and seek her revenge. 

It seemed just as likely as all the other crazy shit going on.

“Okay,” Kyle said. “So how do we get him back?”

“Well… I don’t know if you can,” Henrietta said, avoiding eye contact. “Death took him, Kyle. The circumstances don’t matter.”

“I don’t give a damn if Death took him! I’ll summon the bastard and demand him back if I have to!” 

“That might be our only option,” Henrietta said. 

“S-summon Mr Death?” Butters asked, nervously pulling on his shirt collar. “Gee, I don’t know, fellas…”

“No,” Henrietta shook her head, “You can be damn sure you never wanna try that. But we could attempt to summon Kenny.”

“Then let’s fucking do it,” Kyle growled, impatiently. Why were they still talking? Now was a time for action. Kenny had told him specifically that he wasn’t ready to pass over. Kyle didn’t know why not, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Kenny hadn’t been ready and that bitch had stolen him away anyway. 

Kyle wouldn’t have it. He’d get Kenny back one way or another. And, if he happened to come across Leslie on the way, he’d give her hell. 

 

Apparently it wasn’t quite as easy as sitting around a table with a bunch of candles, much to Kyle’s dismay. There were preparations to make and research to do. Kyle didn’t know why but apparently they needed to know as much about Leslie and Kenny as they could find out. While Stan drove Henrietta home to collect supplies, Kyle took Butters up to his study to see what they could find on the internet. 

He gave the blond his iPad and then settled down in-front of his desktop. There was a beanbag in the corner of the room and he heard rustling as Butters made himself comfortable.

“You really like this Kenny fella, don’t you?” 

Kyle wasn’t sure how to respond. To be honest, he barely knew Kenny. Sure, they’d spent hours talking about nothing and everything but such a short amount of time had passed that Kyle felt it was impossible to _really_ know each other. Hell, Kyle had only been in the house three months; long enough for it to feel like home but was it really long enough for him to be performing a seance? Then again, this was about Kenny and there was just something about Kenny… Something about him that made Kyle want to be better, try harder and fight for him. 

“I guess,” he said finally. 

“Well I’m glad ya found someone to make ya happy. Me ‘n Stan worry ‘bout you sometimes.” 

Kyle wasn’t sure what was more important to address; the fact that Butters was talking as if Kenny and he were in a relationship (Kenny was a ghost for Christ sake!) or the fact that he and Stan were apparently wasting precious time worrying about him when they had better things to do with their lives. 

Kyle was fine. He didn’t need anyone to worry about him. 

(It wasn’t like he was working seventy hour weeks and only socialising with ghosts or anything…) 

“I’m fine, Butters,” he said, perhaps a little too sharply. “Check out the National Archives website for me, okay?” 

“Can do!” The thing about Butters Stotch was that he never seemed to let anything go to heart. Sure, he’d learned to stand up for himself if he felt the speaker was out of order but, unlike Kyle, he could brush off rudeness and cite their mood for the assholeness of it all. If someone spoke to Kyle how he sometimes spoke to Butters, he would rip their goddamn throat out. 

Butters was a good guy. Good for Stan, for sure. 

They worked in silence for a while, searching the address, and the names Leslie and Kenny. 

“Hey… hey, fella - I think I’ve found something.” 

Kyle stood abruptly, walking over to the beanbag and crouching down beside the blond. Butters twisted the iPad screen so that Kyle could see. 

It was a photocopy of a very old newspaper article. Butters has zoomed into the the relevant part. 

_…His wife, Mrs Henry Meyers (given name Leslie) unfortunately stricken with illness of the mind later died in Colorado State Hospital._

“‘Illness of the mind,’” Kyle snorted, “I bet that apart from being a psychopath, she was perfectly fine. Not possessed by the devil or anything.” 

“Gee, you don’t think they gave her electrotherapy do you?”

“Quite probably,” Kyle said. “Nineteen-Hundreds asylum, you can bet there was some dodgy shit going on there.” He scanned the date of the article, doing some quick math in his mind. “She was probably only locked up for a few months before she died.”

Butters shuddered. “It’s all jus’ so sad.” 

“She killed Kenny. She wanted to do worse. The bitch got what she deserved,” Kyle said, heartlessly. While Butters didn’t argue, Kyle could tell he didn’t agree with his sentiment. Perhaps he could have been a little less harsh. He didn’t have room for pity when she was destroying the life of Kenny all over again, though. “How did you find this, anyway?” Kyle was usually the one good with computers. It was irrational but it bugged him a little that Butters had found some useful information before he had. 

“Oh, well, I wasn’t havin’ a lot of luck searchin’ the name Leslie, but that’s ‘cus she was a woman and, well, golly, to put it frankly, they were all rather sexist bastards back in those days. Without fillin’ out a form to put in your request, there’s limited information available about your houses’ previous owners but then I remembered that you mentioned the house used-ta be a haunted hotel so I googled that instead. The hotel had done the research for us, it was just a matter of finding which owner was the right one. Henry Meyers was number four on my list!” Butters was annoying upbeat about it all. 

Kyle hated that it would have taken him a lot longer to consider researching into his houses’ brief history as a business. It was obvious now that it was said and done, but Kyle had been reaching for loose ends, searching names he only knew half of. 

“You’re brilliant! Well done Butters.” Credit where credit’s due and all that. Plus, Stan would never forgive him if he put the blond to work and didn’t thank him for his efforts. 

“Aw, gee, thanks fella!”

So, they had a name. Leslie Meyers. 

“Hey look. She died 17th October,” Butters said. Kyle looked up sharply. “Isn’t that the night you said Kenny went and gone missing?”

Kyle opened his mouth to confirm and they were plunged into darkness. 

Fortunately, Butters was still holding the open iPad and the screen was bright enough to illuminate their immediate surroundings. 

“Oh hamburgers. Does that happen a lot?” Butters asked nervously, his face, illuminated by the glow of the screen, twisted in worry. 

“Not really,” Kyle said, finding his feet. He glanced out of the nearest window but it was too dark to really see much of anything. He couldn’t hear the telltale signs of a storm though. It seemed like a nice night outside, certainly not enough weather to trip the power. 

Could it be that Kenny was back? And, if not Kenny, something more sinister? Kyle wished that Stan and Henrietta would hurry up and return; suddenly the thought of having an ‘expert’ (Kyle was still sceptical) present was more comforting than not. 

He pulled out his cell but he hadn’t missed any calls or messages. 

“I’m gonna flip the power back on,” Kyle said. “Stay here.”

“Oh. Um… Well, okay then,” Butter said, sounding entirely not okay with the request. Kyle didn’t have the patience to deal with Butters right now, though. He didn’t know why, but his gut was telling him there was more to this power-cut than just bad luck and he couldn’t be holding Butters hand through it all if he were right. The blond would be fine alone in the study, he was sure. 

“There’s some music saved on to the device. You won’t need WiFi.”

“Ah, great!” Butters enthused, sounding relieved that he wouldn’t be left alone in the dark _and_ silence. 

“I’ll be back in a minute,” Kyle said. He turned his cell flashlight on and left the room. 

Underfoot, the floorboards creaked like nobody’s business. “Oh, _now_ you’re noisy again?” he said spitefully. The house had been far too quiet since Kenny had vanished, leaving the red head feeling all the more alone in the big, empty place. It made him wonder, once again, whether Kenny was actually the house. At least a sentient house sort of explained how his home phone was able to send him memes. 

No. It would do him no good to take a step backwards right now. He had to focus. He had to help Kenny. 

The breaker box was in the basement because of course it was. Where else would it be in a creepy, haunted house? Generally Kyle wouldn’t have minded, but something about this blackout had him uneasy. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. 

As he pulled open the basement door, he heard it. 

_Drip, drip, drip._

Kyle clenched his fists, his nails digging painfully into his flesh. He’d only heard that eerily consistent sound during one short period before. The week Kenny had vanished. 

Something was definitely going on. 

And they hadn’t even tried to perform a summoning yet. 

If Kyle had to take a guess, he figured that whatever was going on had something to do with Henrietta. He knew he shouldn’t have allowed the goth into his house. She’d brought the wrong ghost back and she hadn’t even tried. Kyle hated to think what would have happened if she’d gotten around to attempting her séance. She’d have probably brought in a whole flock of poltergeists for him to have to deal with. Bloody ammeter spiritualist. 

Keeping his hand steady, flashlight illuminating the descent, Kyle started his way down the rickety stairs into the basement below. 

He’d only gone down there a handful of times since moving in. It was full of old crap he couldn’t be bothered to deal with; stuff from previous owners. 

It only occurred to him now that, perhaps, there were belongings of Leslie or maybe even Kenny down there. 

He went to the circuit breaker first, easily flipping the power back on. He spied the string for the low hanging bulb and lit up the basement after that, switching off his flashlight and glancing at his phone’s battery. His flashlight always drained so much power. It was in its last fifteen percent. It’s what he got for continuously checking his messages just in case he’d somehow managed to miss one. 

Cautiously, he approached the nearest of the cardboard boxes. The dust that coated them was so thick Kyle could have written his case notes in it. Many of them had been chewed through by the rats he was certain still lived down here despite having called in pest control after first moving. 

A quick root through the closet two boxes revealed that they were, probably, abandoned belongings from when the place was a hotel. Certainly nothing interesting, anyway.

Further into a corner he spied an old box tv, no doubt black a white. Probably the one John had bought Kenny and long since busted. On top of it was a dust covered book. Curious, Kyle picked it up.

It was a photo album. 

Eighty percent of the photos were old black and white ones. Towards the end of the album there were some poorly coloured, very nineties prints. The album seemed to be of a family. Even in the black and white pictures it was easy to see they all had fair hair, in varying shades of brown to blonde. Many of them had freckles and cheeky grins. Kyle guessed the album had belonged to John, which mostly likely made it Kenny’s family. 

He wondered whether Kenny had looked like any of them. 

A photo slipped out of the album and fluttered to the floor as he flicked through. Crouching down, he picked up the picture. It was old, the oldest in the entire album. 

It depicted what appeared to be a blond male with hair long enough to tie back. Even with the terrible quality provided by the limited technology available back then, Kyle could see a dusting of freckles across the face that was trying so hard not to smile. 

Even if he hadn’t of been dressed impeccably, he would have been beautiful.

Kyle turned over the photo, noticing the tight script in the corner.

_Kenneth McCormick, 1926_

Kenny.

Kyle stared at the photo, stunned by how close his mental image of the ghost had been. Judging by the date, the photo must have been taken the year he died, presumably while here, at the house. 

Even in such a poor quality print, Kyle could see how Kenny was full of life. His eyes seemed to sparkle, as if he’d just been told a joke but was, as was the fashion back then, trying desperately to keep a straight face. It didn’t suit him; a smile would have been better.

It hurt Kyle’s heart to know that, some time shortly after this photo was taken, Kenny’s life was stolen from him. By the woman who dressed him in such fine clothes. 

It made him so damn angry. 

Gently, he slipped the photo back into the album and took it with him as he went back upstairs. 

He had just reached the entrance hallway when the front door opened and Stan and Henrietta entered the house. Henrietta was clutching a large black bag she hadn’t had before. 

“Hey dude,” Stan said. His eyes flickered past him, searching. “Where’s Butters?”

“Upstairs. Power went out.” Kyle turned accusingly to Henrietta. “I think you brought the wrong ghost back.”

“I haven’t done anything that should have brought _any_ ghost back yet.”

“Well, the creepy shit that was happening before Kenny vanished started up again.” Kyle didn’t bother to hold back the accusation in his tone. For her credit, Henrietta didn’t seem to give a damn. 

“Well whatever,” she said, uncaring. Of course she didn’t care. She didn’t have to live there. “Where do you want to do this thing?” 

They decided on the dining room and, fifteen minutes later the five of them were sat around the candlelit table. 

“Did you find out anything about Kenny?” Henrietta asked, opening a thick, hardback book that looked straight out of an occult movie. 

“After you got the power back up I found out what the hotel said about his death,” Butters told Kyle. “But, gee, it wasn’t too useful. Just the same stuff you already told us.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Kyle said kindly, feeling bad for leaving Butters alone. Fortunately, if any spirits were in the house, they’d left the blond to his music. “I found a photo of Kenny. That’s helpful, right?”

Henrietta’s eyes lit up. “That’s perfect,” she said and began assembling a ring of tea lights. “Place it in the centre.”

Kyle was hesitant. If this didn’t work, the photograph would be the only thing he had left of Kenny. That, and the huge thread of messages they had sent between them, anyway. Still, he had to try. He couldn’t leave Kenny to the fate Leslie had forced him into. 

As if reading his mind, Stan spoke up. “What if he’s in a better place now? Is it really fair to drag him back here to be a ghost again?”

“He wasn’t ready to pass on,” Kyle argued. “He told me that himself.”

“What’s he got left? From what you’ve told us, he didn’t want revenge. All the family he knows is dead. What else is there?”

_There’s me,_ Kyle wanted to say. But that was very presumptuous of him. He wasn’t anything special and Kenny hardly knew him. Wanting to believe that Kenny was hanging around solely to keep him company was absurd. Kenny hadn’t even known he’d existed four months ago. 

“I don’t know,” he confessed. “But it doesn’t matter. Kenny didn’t want to pass on yet and, judging from the fact that I woke up to a recreation of his death, it wasn’t some peaceful passing. He was stolen, Stan! He might not even be in Heaven or Hell or whatever. What if he’s somewhere horrible? What if he’s alone and afraid?”

“Not your boyfriend, huh?”

“Now, now, Stanley,” Butters scolded before Kyle could open his mouth to snap back. “If this is what Kyle wants to do, don’t you think we should support him? That’s what friends do.” 

Stan puffed up his cheeks and then exhaled loudly. “Okay. But don’t expect me to be completely okay with this. If you’re in love with a ghost then that’s fucked up, dude.”

“I’m not in love,” Kyle countered, but he was sure going to a lot of effort just to help out his friendly neighbourhood ghost. 

“Does it really matter either way?” Henrietta asked, sounding bored. “Let’s just get this over with. I have a life, you know.” 

Kyle struggled to hold back his snort. Somehow he doubted that Henrietta Biggle had much of a social life. Then again, who was he to judge? The people he spoke to most outside of work were either in this room or a ghost. 

“Make sure to think about Kenny. Anything you know. _Everything_ you know.” They all nodded. Kyle focused on the late night calls he’d shared with the blond, imagining his voice so clearly it was almost as if Kenny was in the room with them. “We all need to hold hands,” Henrietta said. Her palms were a little sweaty when Kyle clamped his fingers around them. He wondered whether she was nervous. He wondered whether she had done this before. 

It didn’t really matter. Kyle wasn’t expecting a whole lot to happen anyway. 

Once all their hands were connected, they sat in the gloomy, candle lit room in silence. Henrietta’s eyes scanned the open page before her and, after a moment, she began chanting in what Kyle assumed to be Latin. 

The candles around them flickered but stayed lit as she continued her chanting. 

Apparently that was a good sign. Henrietta switched to English. 

“We’re seeking the spirit of Kenneth Mccormick. Are you there, Kenny? Give us a sign if you’re there.”

Nothing happened. 

Kyle’s nose itched and he really wished he could let go of Henrietta’s sweaty hand to scratch it. He twitched it instead, as if that would help in the slightest. 

“Kenny,” Henrietta tried again. “Kyle is here with me and he really misses you. Don’t you, Kyle?” 

“Uh, yeah, sure.” He felt so damn awkward speaking to Kenny as if he were in the room when he clearly wasn’t. This was a waste of time. Henrietta had found some creepy old book in a thrift store and was pretending she was all that. Kyle doubted she’d even had a vision earlier. She certainly had supplied any useful information after it. 

“Kenny,” she continued, ignoring Kyle’s scepticism. “Follow my voice. Return to us.”

“Uh, fellas? Is it just me or did it suddenly get really cold?” Butters asked, before Kyle could suggest they put a stop to this absolute rubbish. 

He frowned. 

Now that Butters mentioned it, the air had become especially cold. 

Stan gripped his hand tighter. “I feel it, too,” the noirette said. 

The candles flickered again. 

“Kenny,” Henrietta said again, tone imploring and a little excited. “Follow my voice.”

Suddenly Butters yelped, breaking the connection between himself, Stan and Henrietta. “Fellas,” he said, eyes darting around the room nervously. “Something touched me – ”

Kyle scanned the room. Maybe it had worked after all? Maybe, just maybe, he was finally about to lay his eyes on the spirit of the roommate he hadn’t asked for but was incredibly grateful to have received none the less.

“Kenny?” he asked eagerly.

And he did get a reply. It filled the air around them, seemingly coming for everywhere and nowhere all at once. The problem was, the voice that answered them wasn’t familiar to Kyle. The voice that answered them was distinctly female. 

“Kenny’s not here right now but can I come out to play?”

The candles flickered out, plunging them into darkness.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween!!!
> 
> Here’s the final chapter :) As usual, I’m not happy with how it starts buuut I actually really like how it ends so, um, progress?!
> 
> Thank you so much for all your support with this story <3

Kyle felt the air leave his lungs as an invisible force shoved his stomach. The chair he was sitting in rocked backwards and he hit the ground with a hard thud. A maniacal laughter followed him down and Kyle blinked, listening to it as it seemed to fade away into nothing.

He lay there, gazing up at the darkness, unable to catch his breath.

“Kyle?”

He squeezed his eyes shut as a flashlight blinded him momentarily. They shot open again as he felt a hand brush his arm but it was just Stan, holding his phone in one hand and extending the other to help Kyle to his feet.

“Jesus, why are things never normal for us?” the noirette asked as Kyle brushed some splinters off his pants. Man, was glad he’d picked up that dining set cheap. Bloody ghosts.

“Guess we did something to piss off God in a past life.”

“Well I wish you wouldn’t drag me into it,” Henrietta grumbled from across the room. She squinted as Stan directed his flashlight at her, holding up a hand to shield her eyes. “Damn, I need a smoke.”

“Don’t you dare,” Kyle warned. Enough shit was going down in his house, he didn’t need Henrietta filling the place with her stinky second hand smoke, too.

“Relax,” she drawled. He could almost hear her eye roll. “So that didn’t quite go to plan.”

“No shit,” Kyle bit back.

“Butters, you okay?” Stan said, probably to stop the fight between his two friends before it could begin. When there was no answer, Stan scanned the room with his flashlight, coming up short. “Butters?”

“Has anyone actually tried the power?” Henrietta asked. A moment later the lights came on, revealing the room and the mess created in its full glory. Henrietta sighed loudly.

It wasn’t too bad. A candle had been knocked over and spilled wax had dried all across the wooden table. Two chairs had been thrown down; the one Kyle had been in was little more than firewood now.

The main thing was that Butters most definitely was not in the room. The question was, did he leave willingly or not?

“Stan-!” Kyle called as the noirette steamrolled from the room.

That need to find the person he cared about… It reminded Kyle of how he felt about Kenny. Was he kidding himself when he said he didn’t have feelings for the ghost? And, if he did, what was he meant to do about it? Anything and everything between them was doomed before it even began. He’d never had much luck with romance but this was the worst yet.

Maybe he’d been more right than he’d known when he’d suggested he’d done something to piss off God in a past life.

With a quick glance at Henrietta – who didn’t look like she planned on moving – Kyle followed after Stan.

It was a big house but it wasn’t _that_ big. Hopefully Butters had just gotten scared when Leslie had briefly appeared and fled the room. Butters was more the kind of person who’d want to stay with everyone else, but it was certainly a possibility.

And, thinking of Leslie… Where had the ghost gone after she’d pushed Kyle to the ground? He’d heard her cackling away and then… nothing.

Kyle hoped (quite probably fruitlessly) that Butters and her disappearance were not related.

“Any luck?” he called as Stan came into view. He got a shake of head in return and felt his stomach sink. He wouldn’t forgive himself if something bad happened to the blond thanks to his inability to let sleeping dogs lie. From what he knew of Kenny, the ghost wouldn’t have wanted to be saved if it meant putting other people at risk. Kyle wished he’d thought things through a little more. As soon as he’d realised Leslie was behind Kenny vanishing he should have taken his time, come up with a better solution. He shouldn’t have rushed into anything. He should-

“Hey, fellas?”

Relief washed over Kyle and he couldn’t even be annoyed when Stan turned his back to him and took off running in the direction the voice had sounded. Hanging back a little, Kyle followed and watched as Stan engulfed the blond in a tight hug after practically running him over in his haste to reach him.

“Where’d you go?” Stan asked into his neck, voice soft.

“Gee, I’m not really sure,” Butters said, patting Stan on the back. “One minute I was with you fellas in the dining room and then, next thing I know, I was waking up on the floor in here. Um, Stan, could you maybe loosen your hold a little, maybe? I can’t breathe…”

With a light laugh, Stan drew away a little but kept his hold on Butters as if he were worried the blond would vanish again if he let go.

“You okay?” Kyle asked from where he lingered in the doorway. Butters smiled brightly at him from over Stan’s shoulder.

“I’m A-OK,” he said.

“Good. Sorry about this, guys.”

“Hey now fella, it’s not your fault. I wonder what Miss Ghost’s plan was?”

“I think she’s just screwing with us,” Kyle said. After all, she could have done serious damage but so far didn’t seem to want to. It almost reminded Kyle of Kenny when he first arrived at the house and how he’d had fun messing with Kyle’s stuff just because he could.

“Well that’s not very nice,” Butters said, pouting. It was such a Butters thing to say that Kyle couldn’t help but laugh. He caught Stan’s eye and the noirette started laughing too. Once they started, they couldn’t stop. It wasn’t that it was particularly funny so much as that they were relieved the worst had not happened. With a bewildered smile, Butters looked between them as they struggled to control themselves.

Eventually they all migrated back down to where they’d left Henrietta. She had picked up the fallen chairs but otherwise just plonked herself down and started picking at her nails.

“Find any ghosts?” She sounded bored.

“No, but we found Butters. No thanks to you.”

“You had it covered.” She shrugged.

Kyle scowled and folded his arms across his chest. “Why did we bring Leslie back and not Kenny?”

“Who’s to say we didn’t do both?”

“Kenny would have contacted me,” Kyle said, though his voice faltered a little. They had been fighting when Kenny had vanished; what if the ghost was still sore about it?

“Shouldn’t we be more concerned about Leslie?” Stan asked, before Kyle and Henrietta could launch into any form of argument. They could both be rather hot headed when they wanted to be and he didn’t think a full blown argument would end particularly well between them. “She might not be doing much right now but she’s clearly up to something.”

“How do you know so much about ghosts?” Kyle asked, arching an eyebrow.

“I don’t,” Stan said. “But I hung out with Henri during her teenage years.”

“And there was a lot of ghosts then?”

Henrietta answered. She didn’t sound annoyed, exactly, but there was a slight edge to her tone that told Kyle he shouldn’t press his luck. “Michael bought a Ouija board when we were fifteen. It started a lot of insane shit. Stan helped us out of a mess. That’s all.”

Kyle didn’t press. After all, Butters was looking like this was news to him but wasn’t demanding more information. What right did Kyle have, really? It was none of his business what Stan got up to in his free time; though it did sting that this had all happened years ago and he’d never been told. They told each other everything, or so Kyle had thought. Then again, he hadn’t told Stan about Kenny. At least, not until he’d needed Stan’s help.

There were more important issues at hand right now, anyway.

“Right,” Kyle said, frowning a little. “Leslie.”

What did the woman have planned? Why had she vanished after pushing Kyle to the ground and stealing away Butters? Was she just a mischievous spirit or something much more sinister?

And then there was Kenny, and Henrietta’s words replaying like somebody had hit repeat on his brain. _What if Kenny did come back…_

Kyle pulled out his cell and typed out a message, sending it to the thread he’d shared with the spirit who’d somehow been texting him not only from beyond the grave but from his own home phone, too.

_If you’re here, please let me know_

He slipped his cell back into his pocket and turned to Henrietta expectantly. “You’re the ‘expert’ here.”

“Chances are she bummed a ride back with Kenny.”

“But then why would she be vocal and not Kenny?” Butters asked. “Oh boy, you don’t think she’s got him locked up or nothin’, do ya fellas?”

Kyle didn’t like the sound of that. Before he could say anything though, he heard it again:

_Drip, drip, drip._

The four of them shared a nervous look.

There was a loud thud as all the open doors in the house simultaneously slammed shut. They all jumped but Butters actually left the ground.

Moving over to the closest door, Stan tried twisting the handle. “It’s locked,” he told them. Using his shoulder, he pushed against the wood as if there was somebody the other side holding it closed and the right amount of force would push them back and allow them their freedom.

Kyle tried the door at the other end of the room but that, too, was locked.

“What is it you want?” Kyle asked, turning away from the door. “What’s your game, Leslie?”

The electricity went off, plunging them into darkness.

Kyle remained stubborn. “I won’t let you scare me. What have you done with Kenny?”

“This is _my_ house.” The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Kyle just folded his arms across his chest. He wouldn’t let some ghost bitch intimidate him. He wouldn’t let his friends be put in any more danger.

“Actually, it’s _mine_.”

“Y-yeah, you tell her, Kyle!” Butters cheered, yelping as a loud crash followed his words. Stan had gotten his flashlight up again by then but nothing seemed out of place.

“Where is Kenny?” Kyle asked again stubbornly.

“Kenny chose me,” Leslie said, her voice taunting. She still wasn’t showing herself and, if Kyle listened hard enough, he could still hear the constant dripping that seemed to accompany her everywhere.

“Unlikely,” he said, “considering you _killed_ him.”

“That was an accident. He understands that.”

Kyle snorted. “Accident my ass. What have you done with him?”

“I’ve not done anything. What makes you think he didn’t hear your call but choose to stay where he was?”

“He wouldn’t.” But his voice wavered uncertainly.

“Do you think you’re special to him? You have known him but a couple of months. The two of us had _years_ together.”

Kyle really wished he could see her and that she wasn’t, well, a ghost. He didn’t condone hitting women but for Leslie he would make an exception. Especially because he didn’t like that she was right. Compared to her, what Kenny and he had shared was but a fleeting moment. What if Kenny hadn’t come back when he’d called? What if Kyle had been a fun was to pass the boredom and was no longer needed?

What if Kyle was going to go back to being all alone in this too big house he’d thought he could make a home?

“Dude, she’s messing with you,” Stan said, apparently using his super best friend powers to tell Kyle had doubts. “I’ve seen the messages that guy sent you and he was clearly smitten. She’s trying to make you give up-”

“Of course!” Henrietta said suddenly. “What Kenny needs right now is unquestionable belief. If you doubt anything, even for a second, he can’t make it back. She’s trying to stop you bringing him back.”

“Don’t listen to her, Kyle,” Stan said.

“Why, she’s just a lonely old hag who don’t want nobody else to be happy,” Butters chipped in.

“How dare – !”

There was a bookcase in corner of the dining room and, at Leslie’s angry exclamation, the books flew from their shelves, zooming across the room and slamming into the walls. Stan and Butters had to duck to avoid being knocked out.

“Henrietta,” Kyle said, after checking that his friends were okay. “Am I correct in thinking that Kenny and Leslie are currently in some sort of between area?”

“Would be my guess,” the woman responded. “Leslie is nearest our side and Kenny stuck the other end.”

“And I can call Kenny towards me with faith in him?”

“I’m sure it’s more technical than that, but yeah, whatever.”

“So what if we do the opposite for Leslie?”

“It’s a little hard to not believe in her when she’s throwing shit at us.” Henrietta ducked as a large book on law flew at her head.

Kyle, however, was a pro at not believing in what was right in front of him.

Because, sure, Leslie was a real person once, but that person had died years ago and, as Kyle was very adamant about, ghosts weren’t real. Which meant, Leslie wasn’t real. She wasn’t there. She couldn’t bother them. She –

The dripping got louder. Kyle frowned as he felt something wet drip onto his face and roll down his cheek. As he went to raise a hand something cold and wet wrapped around his neck. The tight pressure instantly made it hard to breath and Kyle clawed uselessly at his throat, not finding anything to try and tug away. He clawed at the air anyway, at the very least managing to draw his friends attention to him. The flashlight found him and a collective gasp rang out.

“Holy shit, Kyle!” Stan ran over, grabbing Kyle’s shoulders. “What is it? What’s the matter?” Stan was not able to see or feel anything in front of Kyle so, to him, it looked as if the red head was choking on nothing. It was only as Kyle’s feet lifted from the ground and Kyle pawed desperately at his neck that the pieces clicked together. “Something’s got him,” he said. “Henri, what do we do?!”

“How should I know?” There was finally panic in Henrietta’s voice, her eyes open wide in horror as she watched Kyle hovering in the air, face turning purple as his life left him.

“Ke…nn…y…” Kyle managed to gasp out. He wasn’t sure why that was the name that he forced through his constricted throat but, as the fight left him, he found that Kenny was the only person on his mind.

At least maybe now they could be together…

Kyle felt his eyes flutter shut. He could barely hear the screams of his name or the desperate hands attempting to free him.

“ _Kyle…_ ” He felt a smile form on his lips at the familiar voice. “ _Don’t even think about giving up on me._ ”

The next thing Kyle was aware of was lying on the floor, gasping for breath as his friends gathered around him. His vision swam in and out of focus, and it took him several minutes to realise the lights were back on and the dullness he was seeing had more to do with lack of oxygen than a ghost-induced power shortage.

“W-what happened?” he croaked, his voice coming out strained and the words burning his throat as they forced their way up.

“I don’t know. You were floating and, Jesus, I though’t you died!” There was a haunted look in Stan’s blue eyes.

“I feel like I fell off the roof,” he said, struggling to force the words out coherently.

“You dropped pretty suddenly. It looked painful,” Henrietta said. Kyle could concur that it had, indeed, been painful judging from the throbbing in his entirety. He felt too weak and speaking was too much of an effort right now for it to be worth snapping, though.

Behind them, the dining table suddenly buckled, its legs giving way, sending the whole thing crashing to the floor. Everyone jumped, turning to face it, Kyle struggling to sit upright. It was as if a body had been smashed against it with incredible force; it wasn’t an expensive table by any means but it certainly shouldn’t be breaking just for the heck of it. Not like _that._

“What the heck?” Butters said, eyes wide.

For a moment nothing happened. There was complete and utter silence, the living holding their breath, waiting to see if the dead would do anything more. And then –

“Kyle?”

Kyle would know that voice anywhere. He’d listened to it on the phone enough. “Kenny?!”

And, suddenly, there he was. Kyle blinked in disbelief, not quite daring to trust his eyes.

Kenny looked like his portrait but _better,_ like the photo did not do him justice. A black and white photo from the twenties was hardly going to do _anyone_ justice but Kenny especially seemed like a whole other person in reality than in his frozen in time image. He was far more handsome than the photo had depicted (and he’d been pretty damn handsome) but smaller too. And, ironically, he was more alive now than he had appeared in the grainy image where he’d tried so hard not to smile.

Currently, though, he looked concerned. Concerned and so damn real. Kyle had to squint to notice that his edges weren’t quite solid and that his pale, translucent skin had more to do with being dead than just of somebody who hadn’t seen daylight in a really, _really_ long time.

“Kenny,” Kyle croaked and the ghost winced at how hoarse his voice sounded.

“I’m so sorry, Kyle.” His gaze dropped, the guilt obvious in his voice. “This is all my fault.”

Although Stan, Butters and Henrietta were still in the room, eyeing the pair curiously, it suddenly felt as if they were alone.

“Don’t apologise.” Why did speaking have to hurt when he had so much he wanted to say? “You’re here now.”

“And hey,” Kenny said, brightening a little. “You can see me! …You can see me, right?”

“I can see you,” Kyle said, managing a small smile. Now that he could see him, he didn’t want to ever stop looking at Kenny. They stared at each other, smiling.

“Hey, um, Mr Kenny?” Butters spoke up nervously, looking between the two of them as if he felt terrible for interrupting their moment. “Is the horrible ghost gone now?”

Kenny’s eyes widened. “Oh. _Leslie._ ” His gaze darkened and he turned around, looking back at the broken table. “Sorry about that, by the way.”

“I think you being back is collateral damage enough.”

Kenny held a hand to his heart. “Aw, babe,” he said lightly, though his smile twisted back into a frown a moment later and he moved closer to the broken table. “Show yourself,” he commanded in an authoritative tone Kyle would never have expected him to posses.

A moment later where there had previously been nothing, there was a woman lying on the table. She was too skinny, with knotted black hair and tattered clothes. She was also soaking wet.

“Well, that explains the dripping,” Stan said.

Kyle couldn’t help it. Seeing Leslie and what being locked away had done to her, he couldn’t help but feel slightly sorry for her. Only slightly – she did fuck with Kenny after all.

She must have been drowned. Kyle knew they used some pretty extreme water ‘treatments’ back in the day. Apparently Leslie had met her end to one of them.

For a ‘malevolent’ spirit who’d been causing so much trouble, she looked pretty pathetic now. With her sodden hair plastered across her face and her fail body struggling to prop itself up on the broken table, Kyle couldn’t see how she’d almost killed him a few minutes before.

When she finally managed to sit up, she swiped a hand across her face, freeing it of damp hair, and glared at Kenny.

If Kyle had any hope that not believing in her would get rid of the ghost, it was gone now that he could see her. It was a hell of a lot harder not to believe in something you could see.

“Leslie here is very sorry for everything she did. _Aren’t you?_ ”

Leslie’s frown hardened and she said nothing.

“I don’t really give a damn if she’s sorry. I just want her gone.” _And for you to stay,_ Kyle thought, but didn’t voice that part aloud.

“Okay,” Kenny said and Kyle noted that there was a sadness to his tone as he said it. His heart sunk.

“You’re going to stay though, right?” Kyle sounded like a little child, afraid and unsure.

“The thing is,” Kenny said quietly, avoiding meeting Kyle’s gaze. “I should probably stay with her. Make sure she doesn’t cause any more trouble. When you living people mess with Ouija boards and summonings, it opens a path way for the passed over to travel though. I need to keep an eye on her, Kyle…”

“I don’t want you anywhere near me, traitor,” Leslie all but spat.

“Tough!” His voice hardened momentarily as he shot her a look over his shoulder but, when he turned back to Kyle he was all soft edges again. He smiled weakly, finally meet Kyle’s eyes. Kenny’s own pair was blue. The bluest blue Kyle had ever seen. They were, like him, beautiful.

“But… what about what you were waiting for?” Kyle said weakly, his sore voice barely audible but not because of the bruises forming around his neck.

“ _You_ were what I was waiting for.”

“How?” Kyle’s voice cracked on the word.

“I was waiting for someone to make me feel loved again after Leslie betrayed me. You only kept me waiting ninety years… That’s not so bad.”

“Well that’s all very good and well,” Kyle said, voice rising despite the protests his throat screamed at him. “But what about me?! You got what you want and can now clear off but I get left behind! Alone.” The last word was hardly audible, the anger suddenly dissolving as quickly as it built up.

Kenny’s eyes softened and he took a step closer. Without meaning to, Kyle reached out, but his hand passed through the blond. As real as he looked, he wasn’t actually there. Not physically. Not for much longer.

“No touchies,” Kenny said sadly. “I’m sorry for hurting you, Kyle. I promise that I never meant to.”

“Why me?”

Kyle didn’t notice as Butters ushered the other two living people from the room, too caught up in the moment with Kenny. Stan protested, worried about Kyle’s safety with Leslie still in the room but his protests fell on deaf ears.

“Because you’re you,” Kenny said, as if that made the world of sense. He too, didn’t react to the departure of Kyle’s friends. It was just them, alone, in the big house meant for two. There was nobody else in the universe right now, just two men; one living and one dead, wishing they could be together forever.

“But I went to all this trouble.” Kyle hated how whiney he sounded. He hated how his voice wobbled. He hated everything about this situation.

“And I love you all the more for it,” Kenny said, smiling brightly. “I’ve never matter so much to anybody before. Trust me, Ky, I don’t want to leave you. I want to somehow be alive again and never let you go. But what future do we really have? You need someone living. Someone who can hold your hand and shower you with kisses and punch you in the arm when you’re working too hard and need to take a break.”

“All the things you want to do?” Kyle asked weakly.

“That and _waaaaay_ more,” Kenny said, winking. “Oh the thing’s I’d do to that ass…”

“Enough!” Kyle was laughing, but he was crying too. He couldn’t help it, the tears were forming in his eyes, clinging to his lashes and threatening to pour down his face.

“You love it!” Kyle couldn’t be certain but Kenny’s eye’s look a little watery, too.

Kyle went to reach out, before he once again remembered that while he could finally see Kenny, he still couldn’t touch him. That was something he’d never be able to do.

“Thank you for trying to rescue me,” Kenny said softly, eyes watching the hand that was still extended slightly.

“Thank you for saving me,” Kyle replied. _In more ways than one._

“The world would be a much duller place without you.”

“The same goes for you.”

“And if definitely was,” Kenny said with a small laugh. “But then it moved on. And now you have to do the same.”

“You want me to forget you?”

Kenny looked offended. “You better not! But I want you to be happy.”

“I’m not sure I know how.”

Kenny rolled his eyes and, yes, he had been tearing up. A stay tear fell down his cheek. Kyle watched it trail down his face and catch on his sharp jawline. “Don’t be dramatic.”

“Do you have to go?” Kyle whispered, unable to continue any playful banter.

“I think it’s for the best,” Kenny said. He glanced back at Leslie, who was still sitting in the mess of a table. She didn’t look happy, but she was keeping quiet. It looked as if she was too weak to try anything.

“What did you do to her?” Kyle asked.

“Just threw her off you.” Kenny shrugged but Kyle could see there had been more to their fight than that. “She’s weak because we’re still tethered to the afterlife and nobody is giving her enough power to break free.”

“This all seems very YA ghost romance.” Kyle gave a loud sniff.

“I don’t know what YA is but isn’t this a ghost romance? It’s _our_ ghost romance.”

That got a small laugh out of Kyle. “I guess it is. I don’t want you to go, Kenny.”

“I’m gonna be cheesy as fuck right now. You ready? Brace yourself. Here goes; I’ll always be with you, Kyle.”

Kyle laughed. “You’re right, dude. That was cheesy as fuck.”

“I aim to please.”

They stood in silence, staring at one another. Kyle was almost a head taller than Kenny but right now he felt tiny. The idea of never seeing or hearing Kenny’s voice again, of coming home every day to an empty house… it made him feel incredibly vulnerable. It was a feeling Kyle hated with passion.

Several minutes passed, neither wanting to break the intense gaze first. Eventually, though, it had to be done.

“I should go,” Kenny said sadly.

Kyle didn’t trust himself to speak. If he did, he’d probably beg Kenny to stay. Instead he just nodded.

Although they couldn’t actually touch, Kenny moved in closer, reaching on tip toes to plant a ghost of a kiss on Kyle’s lips. Kyle didn’t know if it was his imagination or not, but he thought he felt a soft, cold brush against his lips.

Without another word, Kenny turned his back on him and walked over to Leslie. He held out a hand to help the other ghost up which she ignored. “You’re not staying here,” Kenny said to her sternly. “If you don’t come with me willingly I’ll get death to drag you kicking and screaming like he did me.”

Kyle didn’t think she was going to respond but, after a moment of stubbornness, Leslie reached out and accepted Kenny’s hand. Standing up, she was the same height as her former lover and even skinnier than Kyle had first thought.

“Look after yourself, Kyle,” Kenny said. He gave Kyle a large, beautiful smile, one that was bright enough to distract Kyle from the glare Leslie sent his way.

And then, before Kyle’s eyes, the pair faded away into nothing.

They were gone, leaving only mess and memories behind.

Kyle stared at the spot Kenny had been standing and felt a tear roll down his cheek.

 

It had been a month. One long, horrible month since Kenny had gone. Fortunately Kyle had plenty to keep him busy. He dove headfirst into work, letting it devour all his free time. When his case finally ended, he visited his parents for the weekend. His mom fussed over him, telling him he was too skinny and that he worked too hard. She knew nothing about the hauntings that had taken place in his house and Kyle meant for it to stay that way. He let her fuss. It was nice to still have a distraction now that work had quietened down.

After a meal with his family, he visited Skeeters with Stan, Butters, Wendy and Bebe. When Bebe asked if he had anything exciting to tell them in the love department, the three men shared a quick look before Kyle shook his head.

“Single as ever.”

“Well that’s no good!” The blonde pouted. “I know a nice guy I could set you up with? Oh go on, it could be fun!”

Kyle smiled and thanked her, but declined. He would get back in the dating game, he promised himself, but it was too soon right now. Kenny was still too fresh in his mind. He felt like it would be a betrayal.

It was stupid, but he couldn’t help how he felt.

On the Sunday evening he drove home again, after promising his mother no less than fifteen times that he would make an effort to phone and visit more often.

“You work too hard, bubbe, I miss you.”

“I miss you too, ma,” he’d said. But he’d been thinking about Kenny when he’d said it.

As he reached to put the keys in his front door, Kyle’s cell beeped. It was probably work, or his mother checking that he’d got home okay. Still, despite that knowledge he couldn’t help but reach into his pocket to check, as he did every other time a message came through.

Just in case.

He never expected anything to come of it. Kenny was gone. Kenny wouldn’t come back. Except –

Kyle’s heart raced as he saw the name attached to the message. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be –

He opened the message.

_[imaged received]_   
[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/139273360@N08/45648945521/in/dateposted-public/)

As the smile started to cross Kyle’s face, his phone chimed again and another image appeared under the first.

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/139273360@N08/44924034734/in/dateposted-public/)

Kyle twisted his keys in the lock and threw open the front door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the slightly depressing ending buuuuut *drumroll* never fear because I am turning this into a series! So there will be more ghost Kenny to come!! First thing’s first, though, I want to write a one shot of Stan helping out the goth kids when they accidentally summon a malicious spirit when they’re 15 (don’t play with ouija boards, kids!)
> 
> So see y’all soon, hopefully :D (I’ve just caved and bought Spider-Man and Detroit: Become Human for the ps4 though so maybe not //so// soon... xD)


End file.
